things to charm the eyes and rouse anticipation in the
breasts of boys.

Every day, when the whistle blew at noon, the boys ran, shouting, from
the breaker, and hurried, with their dinner-pails, to the roadside
barn, to eat and gaze alternately, and discuss the pictured wonders.

And now it was all here; beasts, birds, vaulting men, flying women,
racing horses and all. They had seen the great white tents gleaming
in the sunlight up in the open fields, a mile away, and had heard the
distant music of the band and caught glimpses of the long procession
as it wound through the city streets below them. This was at the noon
hour, while they were waiting for the signal that should call them
back into the dust and din of the screen-room, where they might dream,
indeed, of circus joys while bending to their tasks, but that was all.
There was much wishing and longing. There was some murmuring. There
was even a rash suggestion from one boy that they should go, in spite
of the breaker and the bosses, and revel for a good half-day in the
pleasures of the show. But this treasonable proposition was frowned
down without delay. These boys had caught the spirit of loyalty
from the men who worked at Burnham Breaker, and not even so great a
temptation as this could keep them from the path of duty.

When the bell rang for them to return to work, not one was missing,
each bench had its accustomed occupant, and the coal that was poured
into the cars at the loading-place was never more free from slate and
stone than it was that afternoon.

But it was hot up in the screen-room. The air was close and stifling,
and heavy with the choking dust. The noise of the iron-teethed rollers
crunching the lumps of coal, and the bang and rattle of ponderous
machinery were never before so loud and discordant, and the black
streams moving down their narrow channels never passed beneath these
dizzy boys in monotony quite so dull and ceaseless as they were
passing this day.

Suddenly the machinery stopped. The grinding and the roaring ceased.
The frame-work of the giant building was quiet from its trembling. The
iron gates that held back the broken coal were quickly shut and the
long chutes were empty.

The unexpected stillness was almost startling. The boys looked up in
mute astonishment.

Through the dust, in the door-way at the end of the room, they saw the
breaker boss and the screen-room boss talking with Robert Burnham.
Then Mr. Burnham advanced