mbed up on
a chair just behind her, and stood with his arms stretched out over her
and the Giant as if he was saying 'Bless you, my children,' which was a
regular part of the act, and never failed to bring him a round of
applause, and induce people to say, 'What a jolly little chap that Dwarf
is!' When the Female Samson had got a good grip of the Giant's belt, and
had raised him about five feet from the floor, the Dwarf leaned a
little bit forward and ran a pin into the Female Samson's ankle, or
thereabouts. Nobody saw him do it, but it was easy to prove it on him
afterwards, for he dropped the pin on the floor when he had finally got
through with it, and everybody recognised it as one of his scarf-pins.

"The woman would naturally have shrieked when she felt the pin, but she
had her mouth full of the Giant, and she couldn't do more than mumble a
little in a half-smothered sort of way. The Dwarf paid no attention to
that, but gave her another eye-opener with the pin. It went in about an
inch, judging from what the Female Samson said when she described her
sufferings, and it must have hurt her pretty bad; but she was full of
pluck and bound to carry out her performance to the end. She stood three
or four more prods, and then, not being able to stand it any longer
without expressing her feelings in some way, she unhooked one leg and
fetched the Dwarf a kick on the side of the head that reminded him that
it was about time for him to get into his own room and lock the door,
and convinced him that there ain't a bit of exaggeration in the tough
stories that they tell about the kicking powers of an army mule. The
kick sent the Dwarf clean across the platform, and the people, not
understanding the situation, began to cry 'Shame.' Whether this flurried
the Female Samson or not, or whether she lost her balance entirely on
account of having unhooked one leg, I don't know. What I do know is that
she slipped off the bar, and she and the Giant struck the floor with a
crash that would have broken planks, if it had not been that the
platform was built expressly to stand the strain of the Fat Woman.

"It wouldn't have been so bad if she had just dropped the Giant, and
hung on to the bar herself. In that case he would probably have broken
his left leg and arm and collar bone, just as he did break them, but his
ribs would have been all right. As it was, the Female Samson's head came
down just in the centre of him, and stove in about three