your_ looks."

"It's genuine, ma'am."

"I ain't a fool," answered the lady. "I was wondering how you came
by it. Well, anyway, I can't give you change; so take yourself off,
please."

He argued, but she was obdurate. She hadn't the change about her,
she affirmed, with a jerk of her thumb towards the interior of the
tent. Their takings to-day hadn't amounted to five shillings, as she
was a Christian woman.

The Major, glancing beneath the tent-cloth, spied a melancholy man
extracting ribbons from his mouth before an audience of three men, a
child and a woman. He heard Ben Jope's voice raised in approval.
He announced that he would wait outside until the performance
concluded.

"Twenty minutes," said the stout woman nonchalantly.

"Good evening, ma'am," said he, and stepping back, began to pace to
and fro in front of the tent.

Why had he followed this man who, if you looked at it in one way, had
been the prime cause of all his calamity? He smiled grimly at the
thought that, as justice went in this world, he should be tracking
Ben Jope down in a cold passion of revenge; whereas, in fact, he was
hungry to grip the honest fellow's hand. From the panorama of these
ten mischanced years the face of Ben Jope shone out as in a halo,
wreathed with good-natured smiles. Ben Jope--

Here the Major flung up both hands and tottered back as, with a lift
of the earth beneath his feet, a flame ripped the roof off the tent,
and roaring, hurled it right and left into the night.

Under the shock of the explosion he dropped on hands and knees, and,
still on hands and knees, crawled forward to a ditch, a full ten
yards to the left of the spot where the tent had stood. In the
darkness one of the victims lay groaning.

"Are--are you hurt?" The Major's teeth chattered as he crawled near
and stretched out a hand towards the sufferer.

"Damn the fellow!" swore Ben Jope cheerfully, sitting up. "What'll
be his next trick, I wonder?"

"You--you are not hurt?"

"Hurt? No, I reckon. Who are you?"

"Hymen, Ben--Solomon Hymen. You remember--in the Plymouth Theatre,
ten years back. Oh, hush, man, hush!" for Ben, casting both hands up
to his face, had let out a squeal like a rabbit's.

"An' I saw you die! Oh, take him away someone! With these very
eyes! No, damn it!" Mr. Jope pulled himself together and scrambled
to his feet. "I paid for two pennyworth, but if this goes on I gets
my money back!"

By this time show