lling a part of it on the way. So that mystified the
people a little and restored the reputation of the performance, at least
for a while.

The next trick was an easy one, and went off without any slip, and was
applauded. Tom and Jonas had the stage to themselves for a while, and I
staid out of sight and scrubbed at the egg. But do what I could, my
shirt bosom was ruined.

Then came the "Watch Mortar" trick, and to my dying day I shall never
forget how that turned out. Neither will Tom.

We had an apparatus made to resemble an old-fashioned druggists' mortar.
It was really made of tin, in two compartments, so that any heavy object
dropped into it would depress a false bottom and drop through on a shelf
back of the magician's table, at the same time letting into the upper
part of the mortar the fragments of an old watch previously pounded into
bits. Then Tom was to pretend to smash the borrowed watch, and
afterwards fire a pistol at me and take the real watch from my vest
pocket, where he would place it when he went back of the scenes for his
pistol.

He described his intentions and asked for a watch from the audience.
Uncle Job Cavendish, the village barber, handed up an old silver-case
time-piece that was worth perhaps $3.

Tom took it, and after a good deal of talk, dropped it down into the
mortar, picked up the ridiculous club used for a pestle, and began to
pound away. There was a great smashing sound, and poor Uncle Job looked
serious. But he did not begin to look half so serious as Tom did, and I
saw in a minute that something was wrong.

He dropped the pestle, and said hurriedly to the audience, "Ladies and
gentlemen, I find I have left my pistol in the other room. Excuse me
while I run after it."

Then Tom came into the wing where I stood, and jerking his own gold
watch out of his pocket, thrust it into mine, and whispered to me
fiercely, "That mortar stuck in some way, and I smashed Uncle Job's
watch into chicken-feed! Here is mine! I'll have to give him something
back, or we'll be mobbed out of the village!"

Then he grabbed up the stage pistol and hurried back. He rammed the
remains of Uncle Job's poor watch down the big mouth of the pistol, and
I stepped forth, baring my egg-stained bosom to the pistol shot. Bang!
went the powder from the false chamber of the pistol, and Tom, with a
ghastly smile, stepped up to me and pulled his watch out of my pocket,
and with the utmost courage leaned out over th