of pink-and-white check through the melee, and headed for it.

Lou was sitting on the grass in cordial confab with a
melancholy-looking, lantern-jawed man, but at his approach she jumped up
precipitately and ran to him.

"Oh, Jim, you feelin' all right?" There was a little tremble in her
voice. "I knew it was you the minute you rode past an' picked up that
handkerchief Mr. Perkins give you yesterday, an' when you pitched off
that horse I thought you was dead. You hadn't no call to take any chance
like that with your back hurt an' that long tramp an' all; but it was
splendid."

She paused, breathless, and he patted her shoulder. Somehow she didn't
look so downright homely this morning, or else he was growing used to
her little, turned-up nose. Her tow-colored hair was looser about her
face, and where the sun struck a strand of it, it shone like spun gold.

"I'm fine," he assured her. "But who was that man you were talking to
just now?"

"Him? Oh, that was the clown," Lou replied. "He says the old man is just
crazy 'bout your ridin', an' if you'll stay along with the show he can
teach me to stand still for the knife-thrower; the last girl got scared,
an' quit just because she got a little scratch on the neck. The clown
says I got the nerve for it, an' I guess I have, only they ain't goin'
towards New York."

She added the last almost reluctantly, and Jim shuddered. The
knife-thrower! What wouldn't the little dare-devil be willing to try
next?

"I guess you have got the nerve," he admitted grimly. "But we're going
to be in New York by Saturday night, remember. As soon as I get my
quarter from the stout gentleman over there with the striped vest, we'll
be on our way."

But it was nearly an hour before they took to the road again. The boss
insisted on starting them off with a hearty breakfast, and there were
good-bys to be said to the rough, kindly folk who had taken them in as
friends. Except for the litter of hand-bills and peanut-shells, the last
vestiges of the circus were being removed from the lot as they finally
departed, and what had been to Lou a wondrous, glittering pageant had
become but a memory.

"I dunno but I'd as lief join a circus," she observed, meditatively,
after they had traveled a mile or more. "Maybe I could learn in New York
how to do some of them tricks. I could git the hang of that business up
on them swings in no time, only I don't like the way that girl
dressed----"

"Nonsense!" Jim