rrency.

The tide of opinion had turned. From ridicule it had swept with
eager-eyed conviction to vast local pride in Henley as a native product.
From that day on the remaining items of the circus property were
regarded with growing interest. Would Henley actually triumph all
through? became the question the villagers asked one another as if it
were a game they, themselves, were playing. There was much general
discussion over what, after all, really was the "hardest stock" of the
lot, and the general consensus of opinion had decided that it was
perhaps the three wagons, which were too heavy and cumbersome for any
ordinary use. And this view was held till one day when the well-dressed
representative of a gang of men working on a new railway over the
mountain came and took a look at the wagons. They were almost too heavy,
he said, but they might be made to answer his purpose in trucking ties
along the new road. He had offered twice as much as Henley had paid for
them, and yet the latter's laugh of open derision could have been heard
across the street.

"I see you don't want my wagons," he smiled, as he cordially patted the
stranger on the shoulder. "You want your company to spend their money on
them light, painted things that bust in the sun and break down if you
run 'em on anything but a plank floor."

The customer thought too well of himself to realize that he was under
Henley's spell. "How much do you hold them at?" he asked.

Henley mentioned a price which was fully four times what they had cost
him, and he did it in a tone of supreme contempt for the smallness of
the figures. He added that he would never dream of letting them go so
low, but that he had no place to store them and didn't care to ship them
to Atlanta.

"Well, I'll take them," the man said. "I reckon neither of us will lose
by it."

"Well, _you_ won't, there's one thing certain about that," was the
agreeable seal Henley put on the deal as he watched the railroad man
draw out his check-book.

"I really did need one more," the purchaser remarked, "and I'm sorry you
only had three."

"Hold on, hold on," Henley said, as the other was shaking the ink down
into the tip of his fountain-pen. "Let me study a minute. You see that
lion-cage standing on that vacant lot across the street. Now, I'll tell
you what I'll do. The wagon the cage is on is pine-plank like them
you've bought. The lot it stands on belongs to Seth Woods, the
shoemaker; his shop is ri