ot, in New
York, they'll provide me with subjects by the hundred. I did want to
help you ..."

"Thanks," Charley said honestly.

"... But that's the way things are, I suppose," Professor Lightning
said. "Maybe some day you'll realize."

Charley shook his head. "I'm afraid not, professor," he said, and
Professor Lightning shook Charley's foot, and left, and Charley went
back to work in the freak show, and for a while he didn't even think
about Professor Lightning. Then, of course, the news began to show up in
the Chicago _American_, which Charley got two or three days late because
his mother sent it to him by mail.

At first Charley didn't realize that Dr. Edmund Charles Schinsake was
Professor Lightning, but then the _American_ ran his picture; that was
the day Professor Lightning was awarded a medal by the AMA, and Charley
felt pleased and happy for the old man. It looked as it he'd got what he
wanted.

Charley, of course, didn't think much about the professor's "limb
regeneration"; he didn't need it, he thought, and he didn't want it, and
that was that.

And then, one night, he was dropped from the bally, and he asked Dave
Lungs about it, and Dave said: "Well, we want the biggest draw we can
get, out there before the show," and put Erma, the Fish Girl, out in his
place. And Charley started to wonder about that, and after a few days
had gone by he found himself talking about it, to Ed Baylis, over in the
cooktent while they were having lunch.

Baylis was a little man of sixty or so, with a wrinkled face like a
walnut and a powerful set of lungs; he was Wrout's outside talker for
the girlie show. "Because I'm old," he said, grinning. "I don't have
trouble with the girls. And if I got to take one off the bally or out of
the show there's no personal stuff that would make it tough, see what I
mean?"

"That's what I'm worried about," Charley said.

"What?" Ed asked. He speared a group of string beans with his fork and
conveyed them to his mouth. Charley, using his right foot, did the same.

"The bally," Charley said. "The way things are, Dave took me off, and
I'm worrying about it."

"Maybe some kind of a change," Ed said.

Charley shook his head. "He said ... he said he wanted the biggest draw
out there. Now, you know I'm a big draw, Ed. I always have been."

"Sure," Ed said. He chewed another mouthful and swallowed. "Still,
people want a change now and then. Doesn't have to mean anything."

"Maybe not,"