was given the kind of seat he
desired "up high," as Lin expressed it, "so nobody could stan' in front
of him."

Lin insisted on counting the receipts several times while the audience
was assembling and when they reached sixty-eight cents, she concluded it
was too much money to entrust to any one connected with the show.
Emptying the pennies in her pocket, she pinned it up, remarking: "Ef
there's no trouble comes up about them there new linen sheets, we'll
give another show tonight. I hev all the lights hangin' in the cellar
ready."

The ghost seen the night before had been the talk of the town and that
it disappeared on the old commons near the tent was whispered about
among those in attendance at Alfred's show. Lin heard whispers of the
reports and somehow she could not entirely dispossess her mind of the
idea that the new linen sheets were connected in some way with the
ghosts. However, so deeply interested was she in the manifold duties she
had imposed upon herself that ghosts and linen sheets were, for the
time, forgotten.

Sitting on a soap box holding two children on her lap, so they could see
it all, Lin was calling on Alfred to come back into the ring and repeat
a twisting about trick he had just performed. Lin said the children
wanted to see him do it "agin."

Encores were numerous from Lin, no matter whether the major portion of
the audience desired them or not; if the children expressed a wish to
see any feat repeated Lin simply commanded that it be done and if the
performer hesitated to take a recall, Lin sat the children off her lap
and marched the performer out and compelled him to comply with the
children's wishes.

Although it was balmy spring, there was a tinge of chill in the air that
touched one. Many of the boys were compelled to undress to don their
costumes, and Joe Sandford's costume especially was not conducive to
comfort and warmth.

Alfred had strongly impressed it upon all who participated in the
performance that they must have real show clothes. Many and surprising
were the costumes. Tom White's father had been a member of the Sons of
Malta. Young White wore his father's regalia, a cross between the
make-up of Captain Kidd and Rip Van Winkle.

Joe Sanford's costume made Alfred slightly jealous. Lin had trimmed the
garments loaned Alfred by Mrs. Young. She had made him a body dress from
an old patch quilt, the figures worked in yellow and red. Yet the colors
were not as bright as tho