“That may be,” said the mother, thinking it wise to prepare her son for a probable disappointment; “the circus is to exhibit at Boorman’s to-night.  That is twenty miles off, and all may have gone thither.  If those men choose to disregard their word, I see no help for it.”

“It will be awful mean in them,” declared the boy, who had become quite nervous; “I’ll never catch any more tigers for them.”

Tom loitered on his way to Briggsville, striving not to reach there before the time named; but despite the effort, he was in town fully a quarter of an hour too early.

A surprise awaited him.  The news of the recapture of the runaway tiger had preceded him; and, as was natural, the story was exaggerated to an absurd degree.  Jim Travers had told the wondering people that he saw Tom capture Sipo Tahib, as he called him, by jumping on his back and bending his forepaws over his neck. (Peter Parley’s History, which Jim read at school, contained a picture of the naturalist Chatterton thus navigating an alligator, and Jim couldn’t see why a tiger should not be handled the same way.  He preferred, however, that some other boy should be the one to make the experiment.)

So it was that Tom found himself the hero of the hour.  The boys and all his acquaintances gathered round him, and he had to tell the story over and over, until he became tired.  When Jim Travers was reminded that Tom’s modest account did not agree with his flamboyant yarn, he said he feared he had got things a little mixed, but that was the way he or Tom would have conducted the recapture had the chance been given them.

“Are you the young man that caught the runaway tiger?” asked a pleasant looking gentleman, somewhat loudly dressed, as he laid his hand on the shoulder of Tom Gordon, while he was standing among a group of his friends on the porch of the hotel.

“I didn’t exactly capture him,” replied the blushing lad; “but I shut the door of the woodhouse, and he stayed there till the owners came and took him away.”

“It’s all the same; you deserve as much credit as if you had brought him here without help.  I believe they promised you a hundred dollars reward, didn’t they?”

“Yes, sir; one of the men said if I would call here between six and seven he would give me the money; but I don’t see anything of him,” added Tom, looking around, in the hope of catching a glimpse of Professor De La Cordova.  “Has he gone away”

“Yes; he is to appear in the show to-night at Boorman’s, and could not wait.  But I am Mr. Jones, the proprietor, and if you will step inside with me, it won’t take us long to fix it.  I was only waiting to make sure you were the right lad.”

Tom delightedly followed the gentleman into an inner room, where the door was closed and the transaction quickly completed.

Mr. Jones made some sympathetic inquiries of the youth, and when he learned of his mother’s moderate circumstances, expressed great pleasure that the reward had fallen to him.  Then he handed him ten bright, crisp ten-dollar bills.