" said Bart.

"I'll live there till I find what I came to Pleasantville to find!"
cried the man in a sudden passion. Then his emotion died down suddenly
and he fell to trembling all over, and cast hasty looks around as if
frightened at his own words.

"Don't mind me," he choked up, starting suddenly away. "I'm crazy, I
guess! I know I'm about as miserable an object as there is in the
world."

Bart ran after him, drawing a quarter from his pocket. He detained the
man by seizing his arm.

"See here," he said, "you take that, and any time you're hungry just go
up to the house and tell my mother, will you?"

"Bless her--and you, too!" murmured the man, with a hoarse catch in his
throat. "I'll take the money, for I need it desperately bad, but don't
you fret--it will come back. Yes! it will come back, double, the day I
catch the man who squeezed all the comfort out of my life!"

He dashed away with a strange cry. Bart, half decided that he was
demented, watched him disappear in the direction of a cheap eating house
just beyond the tracks, and started homewards more or less sobered and
thoughtful over the peculiar incident.

It was nearly eight o'clock when Bart got through with his supper, did
his house chores, mended a broken toy pistol for one junior brother,
made up a list of purchases of torpedoes, baby-crackers and punk for the
other, and helped his sisters in various ways.

Bart was soon in the midst of the fray. Every live boy in Pleasantville
was in evidence about the village pleasure grounds, the common and the
hill. Group after group greeted Bart with excited exclamations. He was a
general favorite with the small boys, always ready to assist or advise
them, and an acknowledged leader with those of his own age.

He soon found himself quite active in devising and assisting various
minor displays of squibs, rockets and colored lights. Then he got mixed
up in a general rush for the sheer top of the hill amid the excited
announcement that something unusual was going on there.

The crowd was met by a current of juvenile humanity.

"Run!" shouted an excited voice, "she's going off."

"No, she ain't," pronounced another scoffingly--"ain't lighted yet--no
one's got the nerve to do it."

Bart recognized the last speaker as Dale Wacker, a nephew of Lem. He had
noticed a little earlier his big brother, Ira, a loutish, overgrown
fellow who had gone around with his hands in his pockets sneering at the
innocent fu