wn to the very last prophecy and sent
post-haste their scoops to their respective papers and a wave of
indignation swept the entire country that canabalism came so near being
enacted in the very midst of the greatest enterprise of modern
civilization.

The name of the boy could not be learned, nor anybody found who knew
anything about him, but there were thousands of people who were
witnesses of the rescue and bore testimony of how near our nation came
of being disgraced forever. The policemen knew nothing about it. All
they could say was that they found the boy surrounded by the natives,
and they since remembered that he seemed too terrified to speak, and the
natives were greatly excited at the presence of the officers. They had
taken the boy to the outside of the crowd and let him go. The natives
themselves could give only a confused account of how they had heard a
noise and had seen the boy lying near one of the huts on his back and
covered with material torn from the roof of one of the huts. Their story
was evidently absurd. Meantime the delivery wagon had taken the tool
chest away and thus destroyed the only evidence that might have cleared
up the case. The fence was too high for the boy to climb over, and the
Columbian guards detailed to that section swore they always kept the
whole village in view, and it was impossible for the boy to have got
over the fence without being seen by them. Like the great wave of the
sea that breaks into a million pieces as it strikes the shore, so this
great question resolved itself into a thousand theories, and at last
lived in the memory of the people only as the great mystery of Midway
Plaisance.

_CHAPTER XII_

BEAUTY SHOW

Fanny was at the inn when noon came but the boys were nowhere to be
seen. She saw great crowds of people massed a little way up the street
but crowds were a common sight. She heard broken narrations of some
exciting event that had transpired but there was nothing to cause her to
think that her brother might be the central figure of all the
excitement. Johnny rarely missed his appointments with her and she felt
that something unusual had occurred or he would have met her at the
designated place.

She decided to spend the afternoon at the Libby Glass Works and at the
Beauty show. Once in the works, where glass is wrought into the most
curious and costly designs, a few hours seems only too short for a good
appreciation of the work done. The art, as