e sneered at Michael, returning his attention to
him. "Slack him! Let go!"

The instant his bonds were released, Michael soared at Collins, and
Collins, timing and distancing with the accuracy of long years, kicked
him under the jaw and whirled him back and down into the sawdust.

"Hold him!" Collins ordered. "Line him out!"

And the two youths, pulling in opposite directions with chain and rope,
stretched him into helplessness.

Collins glanced across the ring to the entrance, where two teams of heavy
draft-horses were entering, followed by a woman dressed to
over-dressedness in the last word of a stylish street-costume.

"I fancy he's never done any flipping," Collins remarked, coming back to
the problem of Michael for a moment. "Take off your lead, Jimmy, and go
over and help Smith.--Johnny, hold him to one side there and mind your
legs. Here comes Miss Marie for her first lesson, and that mutt of a
husband of hers can't handle her."

Michael did not understand the scene that followed, which he witnessed,
for the youth led him over to look on at the arranging of the woman and
the four horses. Yet, from her conduct, he sensed that she, too, was
captive and ill-treated. In truth, she was herself being trained
unwillingly to do a trick. She had carried herself bravely right to the
moment of the ordeal, but the sight of the four horses, ranged two and
two opposing her, with the thing patent that she was to hold in her hands
the hooks on the double-trees and form the link that connected the two
spans which were to pull in opposite directions--at the sight of this her
courage failed her and she shrank back, drooping and cowering, her face
buried in her hands.

"No, no, Billikens," she pleaded to the stout though youthful man who was
her husband. "I can't do it. I'm afraid. I'm afraid."

"Nonsense, madam," Collins interposed. "The trick is absolutely safe.
And it's a good one, a money-maker. Straighten up a moment." With his
hands he began feeling out her shoulders and back under her jacket. "The
apparatus is all right." He ran his hands down her arms. "Now! Drop
the hooks." He shook each arm, and from under each of the fluffy lace
cuffs fell out an iron hook fast to a thin cable of steel that evidently
ran up her sleeves. "Not that way! Nobody must see. Put them back. Try
it again. They must come down hidden in your palms. Like this.
See.--That's it. That's the idea."

She controlled her