“I thought that Tom and Jack would make trouble, but I didn’t care, for I could manage them.  To my surprise, however, they seemed to feel just as I did.  So they fell to work with a will, and the job couldn’t have been done more thoroughly.  Now, if you will allow me to kiss Dollie, who has come back, I will bid you both good day.”

Harvey Bradley shook hands with his visitor, during which he handed him a liberal sum of money for Tom Hansell, who had taken part in the search for Dollie.  He sent naught to Jack, for he deserved none.  Then he went with Hugh to the outer door, giving him a number of encouraging words on the way.

The whistle of the Rollo Mills never screeched more cheerily than it did the next morning, and there was never a happier band of employes than the 300, young and old, who took their places again in the works.

A short time afterward Harvey Bradley opened and furnished a room where the best of reading was given free to all who chose to accept the privilege.  Still later in the season a night school was started, and the skilled teacher who took charge was liberally paid by the board of directors, who never made a better investment of money.

The interest shown by the superintendent in the welfare of his employes proved to be seed sowed in good ground.  All wrought faithfully and well, and when on the 1st of January the balance sheet was made up, lo! the net profits of the Rollo Mills were greater than ever before.

IN THE NICK OF TIME.

It may sound like slander for me to say that the elephant, which is admittedly one of the most intelligent members of the animal creation, is also one of the most vicious and treacherous.  But it is a fact all the same.  I have seen one of those beasts, that had been fed and treated with the greatest kindness for years by his keeper, turn upon him like a tiger, and, seizing him with that wonderful trunk of his, dash him to death before he could do more than utter a cry of protest and terror.

I have seen another, after waiting weeks for the opportunity, suddenly grasp an innocent person, and, kneeling upon him with his beam-like legs, knead him out of all semblance of humanity.

Columbus, who was the main attraction of Barnum’s establishment some forty years ago, killed several keepers, and was likely to start on one of his terrible rampages at any moment.  The giving away of a bridge in New England so injured him that he died, long before any of my young readers were born.

An elephant, fully as bad as Columbus, was Vladdok, who was brought to this country when quite young.  A glimpse at his enormous ears told his African nativity at once, those from Asia and Ceylon having much smaller ears.  He belonged to the old traveling circus of Blarcom & Burton, and made several journeys through our country in the days when those establishments found no use for the railways, but patiently plodded from town to town, delighting the hearts and eyes of our grandfathers and grandmothers when they were children just as we are now.