ou said."

"Yes, twenty-five to _you_, Sammy boy," Henley laughed easily. "Pomp
will go with you to the stable and hitch 'im up. You'd better let me put
in a ten-cent box of axle-grease for them wheels. If you haven't got the
dime handy I can add it on the bill. I'd hate to see as fine a rig as
that going through town squeaking like a rusty wheelbarrow."

"All right," responded the proud owner of the pony and cart. "Pomp will
get it for me."

"Good Lord!" Fred Dill said in his throat, and he went at once to Seth
Woods's shoe-shop, where there was a group of loafers, and told the
last bit of news. "I begin to think, boys," he said, "that Alf Henley is
goin' to make the only money that dang circus ever made. Jest think of
it--think of a big circus, hippodrome, menagery, an' side-shows tourin'
the whole United States an' Canada without a cent of profit, an' a
mountain storekeeper in a measly hole like this gitting rich out of its
remains without turning his hand over or losin' a minute's sleep. It
looks like thar is some'n crooked in the universe."

"It's beca'se the Lord's bent on smitin' sech cussedness with a broad
hand," said a long-faced deacon, who had come in to half-sole his own
shoes with the shoemaker's tools, and sat soaking his bits of leather in
a tub of dingy water.

"I mought take yore view of it ef the reward was bestowed in a different
quarter," Fred said, grimly. "But Alf don't go to meetin' any oftener'n
I do. Though he kin send up as good a prayer as the next one when they
force 'im to it. Boys, I'm curious to see what he will do with the tent
an' lion's cage. Nothin' would surprise me now. He's dead sure to git
profit out of 'em."

CHAPTER XIV

That very evening Henley took even another step in his amusing
enterprise. He returned to the store after supper and sat writing
letters till about eight o'clock. Then he got up, brushed his clothes,
and made Pomp polish his boots, and adjusted his black string tie before
a glass over the water-pail and basin. Then he went out and walked
leisurely up the street till he came to the dark stairway of a little
public hall over a feed-store. He ascended the steps with a respectful
tread and entered the hall. It was furnished with crude unpainted
benches and lighted by kerosene lamps in concave-mirrored brackets on
the white walls. At the end stood a table holding a pitcher of water, a
goblet, and a Bible, and behind the table sat an earnest-eyed,
mid