expert naturalist."

"Wonderful!" said the local publican.

"But all the same, me mahn," said Quinn, regretfully, "I have half a
moind t' prosecute yeh fer croolty t' animals."

The trick worked, however, the situation was saved, and that night all
Bunkers flocked to see the Missing Link that had been flayed in its
life-and-death struggle with an infuriated gorilla.

CHAPTER X.

THE STOLEN BABE.

IN the larger townships and the small towns visit by the museum of
Marvels on its provincial tour, Professor Thunder, gifted manager of this
"colossal amusement enterprise," as the streamers eloquently phrased it,
preferred to secure a shop in the main street to pitching his tent in
some out-of-the-way place, where his persuasive powers might be wasted on
the desert air.

The Professor flattered himself there was not a more seductive
"spruicher" in the business, and, mounted on a gin case at a shop front
plentifully papered with screaming posters depicting the more popular
attractions, he reckoned that he could always lure a given number of
people into the show by the sheer force of his eloquence, and so make up
the rent, provided there were men and women in the street willing to
listen.

Professor Thunder had found a vacant shop to suit him near the end of
Main-street, Wangaroo. He would have preferred a central site at the same
price, or even less, but none was available. However, business was so
good on the first afternoon and evening that he resolved to extend his
Wangaroo season into the following week. This involved a day of idleness,
an unemployed Sunday, a boon that rarely came to the partakers in
Professor Thunder's godless enterprises, the day of rest usually being
given over to travel and arduous preparations for a Monday matinee.

Nicholas Crips was well content with the change of dates. He certainly
took a good deal of natural pride in his marked success as the most
artistic and realistic representative of the missing link, and toyed in
the reputation he was rapidly making for himself in the show business;
but for all that, it was a great relief to throw off the hide of the
celebrated man-monkey, drop the exactions of art, and be himself for a
whole day.

Nickie did not find, as many celebrated actors have done, that the work
of sustaining a grand role day after day, night after night, week after
week, and month after month, was too exacting; he bore the strain with
consummate ease; moreover, the