“What do you call that thing you brought in the bag?” he demanded.

“Blamed if I know!” confessed Hiram, climbing upon his chariot.  “And I’m pretty well up on freaks, too, as a circus man ought to be.  I jest went out huntin’ for suthin’ to fit in with the sportin’ blood as I found it in this place—­and I reckon I got it!  Mebbe ’twas a cassowary, mebbe ’twas a dodo—­the man himself didn’t know—­said even the hen that hatched it didn’t seem to know.  ’Pologized to me for asking me two dollars for it, and I gave him five.  I hope it will go back where it come from.  It hurt my eyes to look at it.  But it was a good bargain!” He patted his breast pocket.

“Come over to-morrow,” he called to the Cap’n as he drove away.  “I sha’n’t have so much on my mind, and I’ll be a little more sociable!  Listen to that bagpipe selection!”

Behind them they heard the whining drone of a man’s pleading voice and a woman’s shrill, insistent tones, a monotony of sound flowing on—­and on—­and on!

XI

The president of the “Smyrna Agricultural Fair and Gents’ Driving Association” had been carrying something on his mind throughout the meeting of the trustees of the society—­the last meeting before the date advertised for the fair.  And now, not without a bit of apprehensiveness, he let it out.

“I’ve invited the Honer’ble J. Percival Bickford to act as the starter and one of the judges of the races,” he announced.

Trustee Silas Wallace, superintendent of horses, had put on his hat.  Now he took it off again.

“What!” he almost squalled.

“You see,” explained the president, with eager conciliatoriness, “we’ve only got to scratch his back just a little to have him—­”

“Why, ‘Kittle-belly’ Bickford don’t know no more about hoss-trottin’ than a goose knows about the hard-shell Baptist doctrine,” raved Wallace, his little eyes popping like marbles.

“I don’t like to hear a man that’s done so much for his native town called by any such names,” retorted the president, ready to show temper himself, to hide his embarrassment.  “He’s come back here and—­”

Trustee Wallace now stood up and cracked his bony knuckles on the table, his weazened face puckered with angry ridges.

“I don’t need to have a printed catalogue of what Jabe Bickford has done for this town.  And I don’t need to be told what he’s done it for.  He’s come back from out West, where he stole more money than he knew what to do with, and—­”

“I protest!” cried President Thurlow Kitchen.  “When you say that the Honer’ble J. Percival Bickford has stolen—­”

“Well, promoted gold-mines, then!  It’s only more words to say the same thing.  And he’s back here spendin’ his loose change for daily doses of hair-oil talk fetched to him by the beggin’ old suckers of this place.”

“I may be a beggin’ old sucker,” flared the president, “but I’ve had enterprise enough and interest in this fair enough to get Mr. Bickford to promise us a present of a new exhibition hall, and it’s only right to extend some courtesy to him in return.”