money
matters, "a big crowd would be the very thing we should want. But this
time we don't--not this kind of a crowd."

"What do you mean?" asked Joe, beginning to feel that it was more than a
mere notion on the part of the treasurer that something was wrong. "Is
it a rough crowd? Will there be a 'hey rube!' cry raised--a fight
between our men and the mill hands?"

"Oh, no, nothing like that!" the treasurer hastened to assure Joe. "The
whole thing is just this. There are a great many more people in the main
top now than there are admission prices in the treasurer's cash box. The
books don't balance, as it were."

"More people in the tent than have paid their way?" asked Joe. "Well,
that always happens at a circus. Small boys will crawl in under the
canvas in spite of clubs."

"Oh, it isn't a question of the small boys--I never worry about them,"
returned Mr. Moyne. "But there are about a thousand more persons at the
performance which will soon begin than we have admission prices for. In
other words there are a thousand persons occupying fifty cent seats that
haven't paid their half dollar. It isn't the reserve chairs that are
affected. We're all right there. But fully a thousand persons have come
into the show, and we're short five hundred dollars in our cash."

"You don't tell me!" cried Joe. He saw that Mr. Moyne was very much in
earnest. "Have the ticket men and the entrance attendants been working a
flim-flam game on us?"

"Oh, no, it isn't that," said the treasurer. "I could understand that.
But the men are perfectly willing to have their accounts gone over and
their tickets checked up. They're straight!"

"Then what is it?" asked Joe.

"That's what we've got to find out," went on Mr. Moyne. "In some way the
thousand people have come in without paying the circus anything. And
they didn't sneak in, either. A few might do that, but a thousand
couldn't. They've come in by the regular entrance."

"Did they force themselves past without tickets?"

"No, each one had the proper coupon."

"Has there been a theft of our tickets?" demanded the young magician and
acrobat.

"No, our ticket account is all right, except there are a thousand extra
entrance coupons in the box--coupons taken in by the entrance
attendants. It's a puzzle to me," confessed the treasurer. "There is
some game being played on us, and we're out to the tune of five hundred
dollars by it already."

"Is there any way of finding out who thes