"Hello, dere, Viskers!" grinned Carl Pretzel, reaching up to grab the hairy paw of the Zulu chief.

"Howdy, Dutch!" answered the chief, with a nasal twang that suggested New England. "By Jocks, I ain't seen yeou in quite a spell. How's tricks, huh?"

"Dricks iss fine, I bed you. Say, sheef, dis iss mein leedle shink bard, Ping Pong. He iss der pest efer—oxcept me. Shake hants, Ping, mit a Zulu sheef vat vas porn near Pangor, Maine."

"Tickled tew death," said the chief effusively, taking the yellow palm of a small Chinaman who pushed himself closer to the platform.

The scene was the side-show tent of the "Big Consolidated," Boss Burton's "Tented Aggregation of the World's Marvels." The show had raised its "tops" at Reid's Lake, near the city of Grand Rapids. A high wind had prevented Motor Matt from giving his outdoor exhibition of a?roplane flying, and the disappointed crowds were besieging the side show, eager to beguile the time until the doors for the big show were open.

With the exception of Carl and Ping, no outsiders had yet entered the side-show tent. Carl, having once played the banjo for the Zulu chief while he was dancing on broken glass in his bare feet, was a privileged character. He had walked into the tent without so much as a "by your leave," and he had escorted Ping without any adverse comment by the man on the door.

The freaks and wonders of the side show were all on their platforms and ready to be viewed. The Ossified Man had been dusted off for the last time, the Bearded Lady had just arranged her beard most becomingly, the Elastic Skin Man was giving a few warming-up snaps to his rubberoid epidermis, the Educated Pig was being put through a preliminary stunt by the gentlemanly exhibitor, and the Armless Wonder was sticking a copy of the Stars and Stripes in the base of a wooden pyramid—using his toes.

The Armless Wonder occupied the same platform as the Zulu chief. His specialty was to stand on his head on the wooden pyramid, hold a Roman candle with one[Pg 2] foot, light it with the other, and shoot vari-colored balls through a hole in the tent roof. In front of the Wonder, neatly piled on the little stage, were half a dozen long paper tubes containing the fire balls.

"How you was, Dutch?" inquired the Wonder, doubling up in his chair and drawing a bandanna handkerchief over his perspiring face with his foot.

"Ganz goot," laughed Carl, carelessly picking up one of the Roman candles. "I vill make you acguainted, oof you blease, mit mein leedle shink bard."

"Shake!" cried the Wonder heartily, offering his right foot. "It does me proud to meet up with a friend of Pretzel's."

"Allee same happy days," remarked Ping, releasing the foot and backing away.

"Yeou tew kids aire chums, huh?" put in the Zulu chief, leaning down to arrange the row of photographs in front of him.

"Surest t'ing vat you know," answered Carl.

"Dutchy boy heap fine," declared Ping. "We both one-piecee pards."

"That's the talk!" exclaimed the Armless Wonder. "Too much weather for the flyin' machine to-day, huh? Motor Matt was afeared to go up, I reckon, Dutch?"

"Afraidt?" protested Carl. "Modor Matt vasn't afraidt oof anyt'ing. He couldn't haf shtaid ofer der show grounds, und dot's der reason he dit'nt go oop. Der vind vould haf plowed him galley-vest, und den some."

"I see. These here a?roplanes are hard things to handle, and——Holy smoke! drop it! Put it out!"

Carl, as has already been stated, had picked up one of the Roman candles. While talking with the Armless Wonder, he leaned back against a tent pole and clasped his hands—the candle in one of them—behind him.

Ping had stepped back. The Roman candle, held fuse end outward, looked most inviting. Digging a match out of his kimono, Ping scratched it on the pole and applied the flame unseen to the fuse.

While the Armless Wonder was talking, Carl heard a long-drawn-out hiss, a smell of smoke came to his nostrils, and a Niagara of sparks floated around him. Naturally he was startled, and it flashed over him that something was wrong with the Roman candle. Bringing the candle around in front of him for examination, he had it leveled at the Wonder the very instant the first fire ball was due. The ball was not behind schedule. Rushing from the end of the tube, it caught the Wonder in the breast, and he turned a back somersault off the platform.

Bewildered by the mysterious cause of the situation, Carl swerved the candle in order to get a look through the smoke and sparks at the place where the Wonder had been seated.

A roar came from the Zulu chief. A ball of flaming red had slapped against his shoulder, and he jumped for the next platform on the right. Landing on the edge, his weight overturned the structure. There was a scream from the Bearded Lady and a whoop from the Elastic Skin Man, and the next moment they landed in a tangled heap on top of the Zulu chief.

"Put it out!" the Armless Wonder continued to yell.

"Point it up or down!" bellowed the gentlemanly trainer of the Educated Pig.

"Ged some vater!" howled Carl, running back and forth and waving the candle; "ged a pucket oof vater und I vill drown der t'ing in it!"

The Dutch boy didn't know what to do. If he dropped the candle he might get hit with some of the balls himself, and if he turned it straight upward he might set fire to the top of the tent. While he was running up and down, trying frantically to think of some way out of the trouble, of course the fire stick was continuing to unload.

Whizz—slap!

A wad of yellow fire hit the Pig, which squealed and bolted. The gentlemanly attendant tried to head off the Porcine Marvel, but it ran between his outspread feet and knocked him off the stand. A rain of lettered blocks followed.

The frantic Pig bunted into Ping, tripped him, and hurled him against Carl. Both boys went down, and Carl rolled over and over, discharging red, white, and blue balls as he revolved.

Up to that moment the Ossified Man had escaped. But now his turn had come. He was said to have been turning to stone for thirty years, and was supposed to be so brittle that he had to be handled with extreme care.

The first ball that struck him, however, caused him to jump off his board slab with a yell. From the way he rushed to get out of the tent, it was pretty certain that he was as wiry and pliable as the average.

The Educated Pig, to an accompaniment of yells, howls, and screams, and with the lurid glare of the popping balls lighting the smoky interior of the tent, ran on blindly, overturned the stage set aside for the Zulu chief and the Armless Wonder, showered broken glass over everybody, and then tore through the tent wall and out into the open.

Naturally, this Bedlam, suddenly turned loose in the tent, had excited the wonder and curiosity of the ticket seller, the "barker," and the man at the door.

As the man at the door looked in, the last of the balls struck him below the belt, and he collapsed in the arms of the "barker," who was crowding in behind him.

The last of the balls! That hollow, pasteboard tube seemed to have been a perfect mine of shooting stars. It had disgorged itself of a dozen. Carl had not counted them—he was too busy with other matters—but it seemed to him as though the tube had been fully an hour getting rid of its contents.

A madder assortment of freaks it would have been harder to find than wrangled and protested, there in the side-show tent, while they rubbed their bruises and shook the kinks out of themselves.

"It was one of the Armless Wonder's Roman candles," came in sepulchral tones from the Ossified Man as he climbed back to his slab.

"I'll quit the show, and give two weeks' notice this minute," piped the Bearded Lady as she picked her way through the scattered glass, "if they don't cut out these fireworks. My goodness! You might just as well be killed outright as scart to death. Wha'ju jump onto our stage for?" and she glared at the chief, who was gently massaging his burned spot.

"By Jocks," answered the chief, "I didn't care where I jumped s'long's I got away from the fireworks."

"It was the Dutchman done it," flared the Wonder.

"He's a freak," rumbled the Ossified Man. "Kick him out."

"I don'd peen a freak," said Carl angrily, throwing the burned-out tube at the O. M. "Oof I vas, den here iss vere I should shday."

[Pg 3]

"Did you set that Roman candle to goin'?" demanded the "barker" fiercely.

"I don'd set him to going, py chimineddy! I hat him in my handt, und he vent off mit himseluf. Dot's all aboudt it."

"This ain't no place for them kind o' jokes," cried the Elastic Skin Man. "He's played hob with this outfit: Give him a h'ist!"

The ticket seller, the "barker," and the man on the door all three fell upon Carl. Between them they had the Dutch boy turning cartwheels through the entrance.

Ping, the cause of all the trouble, slipped away quietly under the canvas wall—but not until he had picked up something white from the earthen floor of the tent. The object lay close to where Carl had lain, and Ping conceived the idea that it belonged to the Dutch boy and that it was his duty to recover it and return it to the owner.