"See a circus fight?" said Uncle Ike. "Gosh, I was right in the midst of
a circus fight, where several people were killed, and the whole town was
a hospital for a month. See that scar on top of my head," and the old
man pointed with pride to a place on his head that looked as though a
mule had kicked him. "I was a deputy constable the day Levi J. North's
old circus, menagerie and troupe of Indians showed in the old town where
I lived."

[Ilustration: I grabbed a circus man by the arm 047]

"Some country boys got in a muss with a side-show barker and they got to
fighting, and some Irish railroad graders heard the row, and they rushed
in with spades and picks' and clubs, and some gentleman said, 'Hey,
Rheube,' and the circus men came rushing out, and I came up with a tin
star, and said, 'In the name of the state I command the peace,' and I
grabbed a circus man by the arm, and an Irishman named Gibbons said, 'to
hell wid 'em,' and then a box car or something struck me on the head,
and I laid down, and three hundred circus men and about the same number
of countrymen and railroad hands walked on me, and they fought for an
hour, and when the people got me home and I woke up the circus had been
gone a week, and they had buried those who died, and a whole lot were in
jail, and my head didn't get down so I could get my hat on before late
in the fall."

"I grabbed a circus man by the arm."

"Did you resign as constable?" asked the redheaded boy, and he looked at
Uncle Ike with awe, as he would at a hero of a hundred battles.

"Did I? That's the first thing I did when I came to, and I have never
looked at a tin star on a deputy since without a shudder, and I have
never let an admiring public force any office on to me to this day. One
day in a public office was enough for your Uncle Ike, but I would like
to go to a circus once more and listen to those old jokes of the clown,
which were so old that we boys knew them by heart sixty years ago," and
Uncle Ike lighted his pipe again, and tried to laugh at one of the old
jokes.

"Uncle Ike, I've got a scheme to get rich, and I will take you into
partnership with me," said the redheaded boy, as Uncle Ike began to cool
off from his circus story. "You go in with me and furnish the money, and
I will buy a lot of hens, and fix up the back yard with lath, and just
let the hens lay eggs and raise chickens, and we will sell them. I have
figured it all up, and by starting with ten hens an