Back of Pennington’s barn, which was the royal castle of the Court of Boyville, ran a hollow. In the hollow grew a gnarly box-elder tree. This tree was the courtiers’ hunting-lodge. In the crotches of the rugged branches Piggy Pennington, Abe Carpenter, Jimmy Sears, Bud Perkins, and Mealy Jones were wont to rest of a summer afternoon, recounting the morning’s adventures in the royal tourney of the marble-ring, planning for the morrow’s chase, meditating upon the evil approach of the fall school term, and following such sedentary pursuits as to any member of the court seemed right and proper. One afternoon late in August the tree was alive with its arboreal aristocracy. Abe Carpenter sat on the lowest branch, plaiting a four-strand, square-braided “quirt”; Jimmy Sears was holding the ends. Piggy was casually skinning cats, hanging by his legs, or chinning on an almost horizontal limb, as he took his part in the lagging talk. Hidden by the foliage in the thick of the tree, in a three-pronged seat, Bud Perkins reclined, his features drawn into a painful grimace, as his right hand passed to and fro before his mouth, rhythmically twanging the tongue of a Jew’s-harp, upon which he was playing “To My Sweet Sunny South Take Me Home.” He breathed heavily and irregularly. His eyes were on the big white clouds in the blue sky, and his heart was filled with the poetry of lonesomeness that sometimes comes to boys in pensive moods. For the days when he had lived with his father, a nomad of the creeks that flowed by half a score of waterways into the Mississippi, were upon the far horizon of his consciousness, and the memory of those days made him as sad as any memory ever can make a healthy, care-free boy. He played “Dixie,” partly because it was his dead father’s favorite tune, and partly because, being sprightly, it kept down his melancholy. Later he took out a new mouth-organ, which his foster mother had given to him, and to satisfy his boyish idea of justice played “We shall Meet, but We shall Miss Him,” because it was Miss Morgan’s favorite. While he played the Jew’s-harp his tree friends flung ribald remarks at him. But when Bud began to waver his hand for a tremulo upon the mouth-organ as he played “Marsa’s in de Col’, Col’ Groun’,” a peace fell upon the company, and they sat quietly and heard his repertoire, “Öl’ Shadey,” “May, Dearest May,” “Lilly Dale,” “Dey Stole My Chile Away,” “Öl’ Nicodemus,” “Sleeping, I Dream, Love,” and “Her Bright Smile.” He was a Southern boy a bird of passage caught in the North and his music had that sweet, soothing note that cheered the men who fought under the Stars and Bars.

Into this scene rushed Mealy Jones, pell mell, hat in hand, breathless, bringing war’s alarms. “Fellers, fellers,” screamed Mealy, half a block away, “it’s a-comin’ here! It’s goin’ to be here in two weeks. The man’s puttin’ up the boards now, and you can get a job passin’ bills.”

An instant later the tree was deserted, and five boys were running as fast as their legs would carry them toward the thick of the town. They stopped at the new pine bill-board, and did not leave the man with the paste bucket until they had seen “Zazell” flying out of the cannon’s mouth, the iron-jawed woman performing her marvels, the red-mouthed rhinoceros with the bleeding native impaled upon its horn and the fleeing hunters near by, “the largest elephant in captivity,” carrying the ten-thousand dollar beauty, the acrobats whirling through space, James Robinson turning handsprings on his dapple-gray steed, and, last and most ravishing of all, little Willie Sells in pink tights on his three charging Shetland ponies, whose breakneck course in the picture followed one whichever way he turned. When these glories had been pasted upon the wall and had been discussed to the point of cynicism, the Court of Boyville reluctantly adjourned to get in the night wood and dream of a wilderness of monkeys.

During the two weeks after the appearance of the glad tidings on the bill-boards, the boys of Willow Creek spent many hours in strange habiliments, making grotesque imitations of the spectacles upon the boards. Piggy Pennington rolled his trousers far above his knees for tights, and galloped his father’s fat delivery horse up and down the alley, riding sideways, standing, and backwards, with much vainglory. To simulate the motley of the tight-rope-walking clown, Jimmy Sears wore the calico lining of his clothes outside, when he was in the royal castle beyond his mother’s ken. Mealy donned carpet slippers in Pennington’s barn, and wore long pink-and-white striped stockings of a suspiciously feminine appearance, fastened to his abbreviated shirt waist with stocking-suspenders, hated of all boys. Abe Carpenter, in a bathing-trunk, did shudder-breeding trapeze tricks, and Bud Perkins, who nightly rubbed himself limber in oil made by hanging a bottle of angle-worms in the sun to fry, wore his red calico base-ball clothes, and went through keg-hoops in a dozen different ways. In the streets of the town the youngsters appeared disguised as ordinary boys. They revelled in the pictured visions of the circus, but were sceptical about the literal fulfilment of some of the promises made on the bills. Certain things advertised were eliminated from reasonable expectation: for instance, the boys all knew that the giraffe would not be discovered eating off the top of a cocoanut-tree; nor would the monkeys play a brass band; and they knew that they would not see the “Human Fly” walk on the ceiling at the “concert.” For no boy has ever saved enough money to buy a ticket to the “concert.” Nevertheless, they gloated over the pictures of the herd of giraffes and the monkey-band and the graceful “Human Fly” walking upside down “defying the laws of gravitation;” and they considered no future, however pleasant, after the day and date on the bills. Thus the golden day approached, looming larger and larger upon the horizon as it came. In the interim, how many a druggist bought his own bottles the third and fourth time, how many a junk-dealer paid for his own iron, how many bags of carpet rags went to the ragman, the world will never know.

Now, among children of a larger growth, in festive times hostile demonstrations cease; animosities are buried; but in Boyville a North-ender is a North-ender, a South-ender is a South-ender, and a meeting of the two is a fight. Boyville knows no times of truce. It asks nor offers quarter. When warring clans come together, be it workday, holiday, or even circus day, there is a clatter of clods, a patter of feet, and retreating hoots of defiance. And because the circus bill-boards were frequented by boys of all kiths and clans, clashes occurred frequently, and Bud Perkins, who was the fighter of the South End, had many a call to arms. Indeed, the approaching circus unloosed the dogs of war rather than nestled the dove of peace. For Bud Perkins, in a moment of pride, issued an ukase which forbade all North End boys to look at a certain bill-board near his home. This ukase and his strict enforcement of it made him the target of North End wrath. Little Miss Morgan, his foster-mother, who had adopted him at the death of his father the summer before the circus bills were posted, could not understand how the lad managed to lose so many buttons, nor how he kept tearing his clothes. She ascribed these things to his antecedents and to his deficient training. She did not know that Bud, whom she called Henry, and whose music on the mouth-organ seemed to come from a shy and gentle soul, was the Terror of the South End. Her guileless mind held no place for the important fact that North End boys generally travelled by her door in pairs for safety. Such is the blindness of women. Cupid probably got his defective vision from his mother’s side of the house.

The last half of the last week before circus day seemed a century to Bud and his friends. Friday and Saturday crept by, and Mealy Jones was the only boy at Sunday-school who knew the Golden Text, for an inflammatory rumor that the circus was unloading from the side-track at the depot swept over the boys’ side of the Sunday-school room, and consumed all knowledge of the fifth chapter of Acts, the day’s lesson. After Sunday-school the boys broke for the circus grounds. There they feasted their gluttonous eyes upon the canvas-covered chariots, and the elephants, and the camels, and the spotted ponies, passing from the cars to the tents. The unfamiliar noises, the sight of the rising “sea of canvas,” the touch of mysterious wagons containing so many wonders, and the intoxicating smell that comes only with much canvas, many animals, and the unpacking of Pandora’s box, stuffed the boys’ senses until they viewed with utter stoicism the passing dinner hour and the prospect of finding only cold mashed potatoes and the necks and backs of chickens in the cupboards. They even affected indifference to parental scoldings, and lingered about the enchanting spot until the shadows fell eastward and the day was old.

When a boy gets on his good behavior he tempts Providence. And the Providence of boys is frail and prone to yield. So when Bud Perkins, who was burning with a desire to please Miss Morgan the day before the circus, went to church that Sunday night, any one can see that he was provoking Providence in an unusual and cruel manner. Bud did not sit with Miss Morgan, but lounged into the church, and took a back seat. Three North End boys came in and sat on the same bench. Then Jimmy Sears shuffled past the North Enders, and sat beside Bud. After which the inevitable happened. It kept happening. They “passed it on,” and passed it back again; first a pinch, then a chug, then a cuff, then a kick under the bench. Heads craned toward the boys occasionally, and there came an awful moment when Bud Perkins found himself looking brazenly into the eyes of the preacher, who had paused to glare at the boys in the midst of his sermon. The faces of the entire congregation seemed to turn upon Bud automatically. A cherub-like expression of conscious innocence and impenetrable unconcern beamed through Bud Perkins’s features. The same expression rested upon the countenances of the four other malefactors. At the end of the third second Jimmy Sears put his hand to his mouth and snorted between his fingers. And four young men looked down their noses. In the hush, Brother Baker a tiptoeing Nemesis stalked the full length of the church toward the culprits. When he took his seat beside the boys the preacher continued his discourse. Brother Baker’s unctuousness angered Bud Perkins. He felt the implication that his conduct was bad, and his sense of guilt spurred his temper. Satan put a pin in Bud’s hand. Slowly, almost imperceptibly, Satan moved the boy’s arm on the back of the pew, around Jimmy Sears. Then an imp pushed Bud’s hand as he jabbed the pin into the back of a North Ender. The boy from the North End let out a yowl of pain. Bud was not quick enough. Brother Baker saw the pin; two hundred devout Methodists saw him clamp his fingers on Bud Perkins’s ear, and march him down the length of the church and set him beside Miss Morgan. It was a sickening moment. The North End grinned as one boy under its skin, and was exceeding glad. So agonizing was it for Bud that he forgot to imagine what a triumph it was for the North End and further anguish is impossible for a boy.

Miss Morgan and Bud Perkins left the church with the congregation. Bud dreaded the moment when they would leave the crowd and turn into their side street. When they did turn, Bud was lagging a step or two behind. A boy’s troubles are always the fault of the other boy. The North End boy’s responsibility in the matter was so clear to Bud that, when he went to justify himself to Miss Morgan, he was surprised and hurt at what he considered her feminine blindness to the fact. After she had passed her sentence she asked: “Do you really think you deserve to go, Henry?”

The blow stunned the boy. He saw the visions of two weeks burst like bubbles, and he whimpered: “I dunno.” But in his heart he did know that to deny a boy the joy of seeing Willie Sells on his three Shetland ponies, for nothing in the world but showing a North-ender his place, was a piece of injustice of the kind for which men and nations go to war. At breakfast Bud kept his eyes on his plate. His face wore the resigned look of a martyr. Miss Morgan was studiously gracious. He dropped leaden monosyllables into the cheery flow of her conversation, and after breakfast put in his time at the woodshed.

At eight o’clock that morning the town of Willow Creek was in the thrall of the circus. Country wagons were passing on every side street. Delivery carts were rattling about with unusual alacrity. By half-past nine dressed-up children were flitting along the side streets hurrying their seniors. On the main thoroughfare flags were flying, and the streams of strangers that had been flowing into town were eddying at the street corners. The balloon-vender wormed his way through the buzzing crowd, leaving his wares in a red and blue trail behind him. The bark of the fakir rasped the tightening nerves of the town. Everywhere was hubbub; everywhere was the dusty, heated air of the festival; everywhere were men and women ready for the marvel that had come out of the great world, bringing pomp and circumstance in its gilded train; everywhere in Willow Creek the spirit which put the blue sash about the country girl’s waist and the flag in her beau’s hat ran riot, save at the home of Miss Morgan. There the bees hummed lazily over the old-fashioned flower garden; there the cantankerous jays jabbered in the cottonwoods; there the muffled noises of the town festival came as from afar; there Miss Morgan puttered about her morning’s work, trying vainly to croon a gospel hymn; and there Bud Perkins, prone upon the sitting-room sofa, made parallelograms and squares and diamonds with the dots and lines on the ceiling paper. When the throb of the drum and the blare of the brass had set the heart of the town to dancing, some wave of the ecstasy seeped through the lilac bushes and into the quiet house. The boy on the sofa started up suddenly, checked himself ostentatiously, walked to the bird cage, and began to play with the canary. The wave carried the little spinster to the window. The circus had a homestead in human hearts before John Wesley staked his claim, and even so good a Methodist as Miss Morgan could not be deaf to the scream of the calliope nor the tinkle of cymbals.

To emphasize his desolation, Bud left the room, and sat down by a tree in the yard, with his back to the kitchen door and window. There Miss Morgan saw him playing mumble-peg in a desultory fashion. When the courtiers of Boyville came home from the parade they found him; and because he sat playing a silent, sullen, solitary game, and responded to their banter only with melancholy grunts, they knew that the worst had befallen him. Much confab followed, in which the pronoun “she” and “her” were spoken. Otherwise Miss Morgan was unidentified. For the conversation ran thus, over and over:

“You ask her.”

“Naw, I’ve done ast ’er.”

“’T won’t do no good for me to ast ’er. She don’t like me.”

“I ain’t ’fraid to ast ’er.”

“Well, then, why don’t you?”

“Why don’t you?”

“Let’s all ast ’er.”

“S’pose she will, Bud?”

“I dunno.”

Then Piggy and Abe and Jimmy and Mealy came trapesing up to Miss Morgan’s kitchen door. Bud sat by the tree twirling his knife at his game. Piggy, being the spokesman, stood in the doorway. “Miss Morgan,” he said, as he slapped his leg with his hat.

“Well, Winfield?” replied the little woman, divining his mission, and hardening her heart against his purpose.

“Miss Morgan,” he repeated, and then coaxed sheepishly, “can’t Bud go to the show with us, Miss Morgan?”

“I’m afraid not to-day,” smiled back Miss Morgan, as she went about her work. A whisper from the doorstep prompted Piggy to “ask her why;” whereat Piggy echoed: “Why can’t he, Miss Morgan?”

“Henry misbehaved in church last night, and we’ve agreed that he shall stay home from the circus.”

Piggy advanced a step or two inside the door, laughing diplomatically: “O no, Miss Morgan; don’t you think he’s agreed. He’s just dyin’ to go.”

Miss Morgan smiled, but did not join in Piggy’s hilarity a bad sign. Piggy tried again: “They got six elephants, and one’s a trick elephant. You’d die a-laughin’ if you saw him.” And Piggy went into a spasm of laughter.

But it left Miss Morgan high and dry upon the island of her determination.

Piggy prepared for an heroic measure, and stepped over to the kitchen table, leaning upon it as he pleaded: “This is the last circus this year, Miss Morgan, and it’s an awful good one. Can’t he go just this once?”

The debate lasted ten minutes, and at the end four boys walked slowly, with much manifestation of feeling, back to the tree where the fifth sat. There was woe and lamentation after the manner of boy-kind. When the boys left the yard it seemed to Miss Morgan that she could not look from her work without seeing the lonesome figure of Bud. In the afternoon the patter of feet by her house grew slower, and then ceased. Occasionally a belated wayfarer sped by. The music of the circus band outside of the tent came to Miss Morgan’s ears on gusts of wind, and died away as the wind ebbed. She dropped the dish-cloth three times in five minutes, and washed her cup and saucer twice. She struggled bravely in the Slough of Despond for awhile, and then turned back with Pliable.

“Henry,” she said, as the boy walked past her carrying peppergrass to the bird, “Henry, what made you act so last night?”

The boy dropped his head and answered: “I dunno.”

“But, Henry, didn’t you know it was wrong?”

“I dunno.”

“Why did you stick that little boy with the pin?”

“Well well ” he gasped, preparing for a defence. “Well he pinched me first.”

“Yes, Henry, but don’t you know that it’s wrong to do those things in church? Don’t you see how bad it was?”

“I was just a-playin’, Miss Morgan; I didn’t mean to.”

Bud did not dare to trust his instinctive reading of the signs. He went on impulsively: “I wanted him to quit, but he just kept right on, and Brother Baker didn’t touch him.”

The wind brought the staccato music of the circus band to the foster-mother’s ears. The music completed her moral decay, for she was thinking, if Brother Baker would only look after his own children as carefully as he looked after those of other people, the world would be better. Then she said: “Now, Henry, if I let you go, just this once now just this once, mind you will you promise never to do anything like that again?”

Blackness dropped from the boy’s spirit, and by main strength he strangled a desire to yell. The desire revived when he reached the alley, and he ran whooping to the circus grounds.

There is a law of crystallization among boys which enables molecules of the same gang to meet in whatever agglomeration they may be thrown. So ten minutes after Bud Perkins left home he found Piggy and Jimmy and old Abe and Mealy in the menagerie tent. Whereupon the South End was able to present a bristling front to the North End a front which even the pleasings of the lute in the circus band could not break. But the boys knew that the band playing in the circus tent meant that the performance in the ring was about to begin. So they cut short an interesting dialogue with a keeper, concerning the elephant that remembered the man who gave her tobacco ten years ago, and tried to kill him the week before the show came to Willow Creek. But when the pageant in the ring unfolded its tinselled splendor in the Grand Entry, Bud Perkins left earth and walked upon clouds of glory. His high-strung nerves quivered with delight as the ring disclosed its treasures Willie Sells on his spotted ponies, James Robinson on his dapple gray, the “8 funny clowns count them 8,” the Japanese jugglers and tumblers, the bespangled women on the rings, the dancing ponies, and the performing dogs. The climax of his joy came when Zazell, “the queen of the air,” was shot from her cannon to the trapeze. Bud had decided, days before the circus, that this feature would please him most. Zazell’s performance was somewhat tame, but immediately thereafter a really startling thing happened. A clown holding the trick mule called to the boys near Bud, who nudged him into the clown’s attention. The clown, drawing from the wide pantaloons a dollar, pantomimed to Bud. He held it up for the boy and all the spectators to see. Alternately he pointed to the trick mule and to the coin, coaxing and questioning by signs, as he did so. It took perhaps a minute for Bud’s embarrassment to wear off. Then two motives impelled him to act. He didn’t propose to let the North-enders see his embarrassment, and he saw that he might earn the dollar for Miss Morgan’s missionary box, thus mitigating the disgrace he had brought upon her in church. This inspiration literally flashed over Bud, and before he knew it, he was standing in the ring, with his head cocked upon one side to indicate his utter indifference to everything in the world. Of course it was a stupendous pretence. For under his pretty starched shirt, which Miss Morgan had forced on him in the hurry of departure, his heart was beating like a little windmill in a gale. As Bud bestrode the donkey the cheers of the throng rose, but above the tumult he could hear the North End jeering him. He could hear the words the North-enders spoke, even their “ho-o-oho-os,” and their “nyayh-nyayh-nyayahs,” and their “look at old pretty boy’s,” and their “watch-him-hit-the-roof’s,” and their “get-a-basket’s,” and similar remarks less desirable for publication. As the donkey cantered off, Bud felt sure he could keep his seat. Once the animal bucked. Bud did not fall. The donkey ran, and stopped quickly. Bud held on. Then the donkey’s feet twinkled it seemed to Bud in the very top of the tent and Bud slid off the animal’s neck to the ring. The clown brought the boy his hat, and stood over him as he rose. Bud laughed stupidly into the chalked face of the clown, who handed Bud a dollar, remarking in a low voice, “Well, son, you’re a daisy. They generally drop the first kick.”

What passed in the ring as Bud left it, bedraggled and dusty, did not interest him. He brushed himself as he went. The band was playing madly, and the young woman in the stiff skirts was standing by her horse ready to mount. The crowd did not stop laughing; Bud inclined his head to dust his knickerbockers, and then in a tragic instant he saw what was convulsing the multitude with laughter. The outer seam of the right leg of his velveteen breeches was gone, and a brown leg was winking in and out from the flapping garment as he walked. Wildly he gathered the parted garment, and it seemed to him that he never would cover the ground between the ring and the benches. In the course of several aeons which the other boys measured by fleeting minutes the wave of shame that covered Bud subsided. Pins bound up the wounds in his clothes. He drew a natural breath, and was able to join the mob which howled down the man who announced the concert.

After that the inexorable minutes flew by until the performance ended. In the menagerie tent Bud and his friends looked thirstily upon the cool, pink “schooners” of lemonade, and finally, when they had spent a few blissful moments with the monkeys and had enjoyed a last, long, lingering look at the elephants, they dragged themselves unwillingly away into the commonplace of sunshine and trees and blue sky. Only the romantic touch of the side-show banners and the wonder of the gilded wagons assured them that their memories of the passing hour were not empty dreams.

The boys were standing enraptured before the picture of the fat woman upon the swaying canvas. Bud had drifted away from them to glut his eyes upon the picture of the snakes writhing around the charmer. The North-enders had been following Bud at a respectful distance, waiting for the opportunity which his separation from his clan gave to them. They were enforced by a country boy of great reputed prowess in battle. Bud did not know his danger until they pounced upon him. In an instant the fight was raging. Over the guy ropes it went, under the ticket wagon, into the thick of the lemonade stands. And when Piggy and Abe and Jimmy had joined it, they trailed the track of the storm by torn hats, bruised, battle-scarred boys, and the wreckage incident to an enlivening occasion. When his comrades found Bud, the argument had narrowed down to Bud and the boy from the country, the other wranglers having dropped out for heavy repairs. The fight, which had been started to avenge ancient wrongs, particularly the wrongs of the bill-board, only added new wrongs to the list. The country boy was striking wildly, and trying to clinch his antagonist, when the town marshal the bogie-man of all boys stopped the fight. But of course no town marshal can come into the thick of a discussion in Boyville and know much of the merits of the question. So when the marshal of Willow Creek saw Bud Perkins putting the finishing touches of a good trouncing on a strange boy, and also saw Bill Pennington’s boy, and Henry Sears’s boy, and Mrs. Carpenter’s boy, and old man Jones’s boy dancing around in high glee at the performance, he quietly gathered in the boys he knew, and let the stranger go.

Now no boy likes to be marched down the main street of his town with the callous finger of the marshal under his shirt-band. The spectacle operates distinctly against the peace and dignity of Boyville for months thereafter. For passing youths who forget there is a morrow jibe at the culprits and thus plant the seeds of dissensions which bloom in fights. It was a sweaty, red-faced crew that the marshal dumped into Pennington’s grocery with, “Here, Bill, I found your boy and these young demons fightin’ down ’t the circus ground, and I took ’em in charge. You ’tend to ’em, will you?”

Mr. Pennington’s glance at his son showed that Piggy was unharmed. A swift survey of the others gave each, save Bud, a bill of health. But when Mr. Pennington’s eyes fell on Bud, he leaned on a show-case and laughed till he shook all over; for Bud, with a rimless hat upon a towselled head, with a face scratched till it looked like a railroad map, with a torn shirt that exposed a dirty shoulder and a freckled back, with trousers so badly shattered that two hands could hardly hold them together, as Mr. Pennington expressed it, Bud looked like a second-hand boy. The simile pleased Pennington so that he renewed his laughter, and paid no heed to the chatter of the pack clamoring to tell all in one breath, the history of the incident that had led to Bud’s dilapidation. Also they were drawing gloomy pictures of the appearance of his assailants, after the custom of boys in such cases. Because his son was not involved in the calamity, Piggy’s father was not moved deeply by the story of the raid of the North-enders and their downfall. So he put the young gentlemen of the Court of Boyville into the back room of his grocery store, where coal-oil and molasses barrels and hams and bacon and black shadows of many mysterious things were gathered. He gave the royal party a cheese knife and a watermelon, and bade them be merry, a bidding which set the hearts of Piggy and Abe and Jimmy and Mealy to dancing, while Bud’s heart, which had been sinking lower and lower into a quagmire of dread, beat on numbly and did not join the joy. As the time for going home approached, Bud shivered in his soul at the thought of meeting Miss Morgan. Not even the watermelon revived him, and when a watermelon will not help a boy his extremity is dire. Still he laughed and chatted with apparent merriment, but he knew how hollow was his laughter and what mockery was in his cheer. When the melon was eaten business took its regular order.

“Say, Bud, how you goin’ to get home?” asked Abe.

Bud grinned as he looked at his rags.

“Gee,” said Mealy, “I’m glad it ain’t me.”

“Aw, shucks,” returned Bud, and he thought of the stricken Ananias in the Sunday-school lesson leaf as he spoke; “run right through like I always do. What I got to be ’fraid of?”

“Yes, Mr. Bud, you can laugh, but you know you’ll catch it when you get home.”

This shaft from Jimmy Sears put in words the terror in Bud’s heart. But he replied: “I’ll bet you I don’t.”

Bud’s instinct piloted him by a circuitous route up the alley to the kitchen door. Miss Morgan sat on the front porch, waiting for the boy to return before serving supper. He stood helplessly in the kitchen for a minute, with a weight of indecision upon him. He feared to go to the front porch, where Miss Morgan was. He feared to stay in the kitchen. But when he saw the empty wood-box a light seemed to dawn. Instinct guided him to the woodpile, and the law of self-preservation filled his arms with wood, and instinct carried him to the kitchen wood-box time and again, and laid the wood in the box as gently as if it had been glass and as softly as if it had been velvet. Not until the pile had grown far above the wainscoting on the kitchen wall, did a stick crashing to the floor tell Miss Morgan that Bud was in the house.

But there is a destiny that shapes our ends, and just as the falling wood attracted Miss Morgan’s attention, it was diverted by a belligerent party at her front gate. This belligerent party was composed of two persons, to wit: one mother from the north end of Willow Creek, irate to the spluttering point, and one boy lagging as far behind the mother as his short arm would allow him to lag. The mother held the short arm, and was literally dragging her son to Miss Morgan’s gate to offer him in evidence as “Exhibit A” in a possible cause of the State of Kansas vs. Henry Perkins. Exhibit A was black and blue as to the eyes, torn as to the shirt, bloody as to the nose, tumbled and dusty as to the hair, and as to the countenance, clearly and unquestionably sheep-faced. The mother opened the bombardment with: “Miss Morgan, I just want you to look at my boy.”

Miss Morgan looked in horror, and exclaimed: “Well, for mercy sakes! Where on earth’s he been?”

And the leader of the war party returned: “Where’s he been? Well, I’ll tell you where he’s been. And I just want you to know who done this.” Here Exhibit A got behind a post. The recital of the details of his catastrophe was humiliating. But the mother continued: “Henry Perkins done this. I don’t believe in stirring up neighborhood quarrels and all that, but I’ve just stood this long enough. My boy can’t stick his nose out of the door without that Perkins boy jumpin’ on him. If you can’t do anything with that Perkins boy, I’ll show him there’s a law in this land.”

Miss Morgan wilted as the speech proceeded. She had voice only to say, “I’m sure there’s some mistake;” and then remembering the crash of the wood on the kitchen floor, she called: “Henry, come here!”

As Bud shambled through the house, the spokesman of the belligerents replied: “No, there isn’t no mistake either. My boy is a good little boy, and just as peaceable a boy as there is in this town. And because I don’t allow him to fight, that Perkins boy picks on him all the time. I’ve told him to keep out of his way and not to play with Henry Perkins, but he can’t be runnin’ all over this town to keep ”

And then Exhibit B, with scratched face, tattered raiment, and grimy features, stood in the doorway. The witness for the State looked in dumb amazement at the wreck. Miss Morgan saw Bud, and her temper rose not at him, but at his adversary. Exhibit A sulkily turned his face from Exhibit B, and Exhibit B seemed to be oblivious of the presence of Exhibit A; for the boys it was a scene too shameful for mutual recognition. Miss Morgan broke the heavy silence with: “Henry, where on earth have you been?”

“Been t’ the circus,” replied the boy.

“Henry, did you blacken that little boy’s eyes, and tear his clothes that way?” inquired Miss Morgan when her wits returned.

“Why no’m I didn’t. But he was one of four fellers that picked on me comin’ home from the circus, and tried to lick me.”

“Willie,” demanded the head of the attacking posse, “did you pick a fight with that Perkins boy?”

“Oh, no ’m, no ‘m! I was just playin’ round the tent, me and another boy, and Bud he come up and jumped on us.” And then to add verisimilitude to his narrative, he appended: “Him and four other boys.”

“Henry,” asked Miss Morgan, as she surveyed the debris of Henry’s Sunday clothes, and her womanly wrath for the destroyer of them began to boil, “Henry, now tell me honestly, is this little boy telling the truth? Now, don’t you story to me, Henry.”

“Honest injun, Miss Morgan, I cross my heart and hope to drop dead this minute if I ain’t tellin’ you the way it was. Him and them North-enders, why they come along and called me names, and he tried to hit me, and I just shoved him away like this,” and Henry executed a polite pantomime. “And I was swingin’ my arms out to keep ’em all from hittin’ me, and he got in the way, and I couldn’t help it. And they was all a pickin’ on me, and I told ’em all the time I didn’t want to fight.”

But Exhibit A kept looking at his mother and shaking his head in violent contradiction of Bud, as the story was told.

Miss Morgan asked: “Who scratched your face so, Henry?”

“Him; he’s all the time fightin’ me.”

“No, ma, I didn’t. You know I didn’t.”

Exhibit A and Exhibit B were still back to back. Then Exhibit B responded: “Miss Morgan, you ast him if he didn’t cuss and damn me, and say he was goin’ to pound me to death if I ever come north of Sixth.”

To which the leader of the raiders returned in great scorn: “The very idea! Just listen at that! Why, Miss Morgan, that Perkins boy is the bully of this town. Come on, Willie, your pa will see if there is no law to protect you from such boys as him.” Whereupon the war party faced about, and walked down the sidewalk and away.

Miss Morgan and Bud watched the North End woman and her son depart. Miss Morgan turned to Bud, and spoke spiritedly: “Now, Henry, don’t ever have anything to do with that kind of trash again. Now, you won’t forget, will you, Henry?”

Bud examined his toes carefully, and replied, “No ’m.”

In the threshold she put her hand on the boy’s shoulder, and continued: “Now, don’t you mind about it, Henry. They sha’n’t touch you. You come and wash, and we’ll have supper.”

When a boy has a woman for a champion, if he is wise, he trusts her to any length. So Bud went to the kitchen, picked up the water-bucket, and went to the well, partly to keep from displaying a gathering wave of affection for his foster-mother, and partly to let the magnificence of the wood-box burst upon her in his absence. When he returned, he found Miss Morgan pointing toward the wood-box and beaming upon him. Bud grinned, and fished in his pocket for the coin.

“Here’s a dollar I got for ridin’ the trick mule,” he faltered. “I thought it would be nice for the missionary society.” That he might check any weak feminine emotions, he turned his attention to the supper-table, and blurted: “Gee, we’re goin’ to have pie, ain’t we? I tell you, I’m mighty pie hungry.”

The glow of Miss Morgan’s melted heart shone upon her face. Through a seraphic smile she spoke: “It’s apple pie, too, Henry your kind.” As she put the supper upon the table, she asked: “Did you have a good time at the circus, Henry?”

The boy nodded vehemently, and said: “You bet!” and then went on, after a pause, “I guess I tore my pants a little gettin’ off of that mule; but I thought you’d like the dollar.”

It was the finest speech he could make. “I guess I can mend them, Henry,” she answered; and then she asked, with her face in the cupboard, “Sha’n’t we try some of the new strawberry preserves, Henry?”

As she was opening the jar she concluded that Henry Perkins was an angel a conclusion which, in view of the well-known facts, was manifestly absurd.