he did
like a cat, and even then he never came up with them; he was terribly
disappointed; and to finish off his miseries, at last a wicked creature
with a sword came up behind him, as he was leaning his head down on the
table in despair, and cut off his head before your very eyes; really and
truly cut it off; there was no doubt about it; the head was on the table
and the poor man was in the chair; Freddie was terrified, and clutched
Mr. Toby's arm. But when the wicked murderer had gone away, back popped
the head onto the dead man's neck, his eyes opened, he grinned from ear
to ear, and there he was on his feet, skipping and tumbling, as lively
as ever; and at that Freddie and all the others in the house roared and
shouted and clapped their hands.

"Is that Mr. Hanlon?" whispered Freddie into Mr. Toby's ear.

"Reckon it is," said Toby, too excited himself to pay much attention to
Freddie.

But it could not last forever. Even the peanuts, which Toby bought for
Freddie between the first and second acts, were all gone, and the
curtain was down for the last time, and the crowd crushed through the
doors, and Mr. Toby put on his white derby hat.

They were in the street, and the speechless Mr. Hanlon was a thing of
the past. Freddie did not believe that he would ever see that dumb and
loose-headed man again; but in that he was mistaken, as you shall see.

Toby left him at the corner near his father's house.

"What I say is," said Toby, "three cheers for our growing-up party!"

"Yes," said Freddie, "and three cheers for Mr. Hanlon!"

CHAPTER V

THE CHINAMAN'S HEAD

For a long time afterwards, Freddie dreamed at night of a hunchbacked
man whose head came off and popped on again, and wicked red demons who
chased a poor man with a white face who tried to cry for help and could
not speak a word, and of a Chinaman's head without a body, smoking a
long clay pipe. In the daytime, he thought a good deal about the people
he was now acquainted with: Mr. Toby with his white derby hat, Aunt
Amanda swallowing pins, the sailorman from China, Mr. Punch and his
father, Mr. Hanlon with his head on the table, the Churchwarden smoking
his churchwarden pipe, and the two old Codgers, one so sly and the other
so beggarly; but that which occupied his mind more than anything else
was the Chinaman's head on Mr. Toby's shelf.

Freddie was older now, and as time went on it might be thought that he
would have grown accustomed to all