an went on--"stranger
even than it looks. How in the world did you know that I was looking for
the Madigans?"

"Are you?" asked the boy, dully. His body might be down in Jane Cody's
cabin, but his soul was up aloft there where the Madigans held high
carnival.

"Yes, I am," answered the stranger, his eyes fixed upon the odd figure
before him.

"Well, there they are," the boy said, pointing upward to the grotesque
dancing shadows.

"Eh?--I beg your pardon, I--I don't understand. Just what has happened?"
asked the stranger.

"Nothin'," said Jack. "The lamp gets tipped over when they're playing
Old Mother Gibson, and they just throw it out so's not to set the house
afire."

"Every night?" asked the man, in the polite tone strangers adopt in
striving to fathom a local mystery.

"Nope," said the boy, in a matter-of-fact tone. "They can't play it
every night; sometimes their aunt won't let 'em."

"You appear to know them." There was a smile hidden beneath the voice;
but Jack was thinking, not of the questioner, indistinguishable in the
darkness, but of the mad carnival up yonder on the hill.

"Yep. That's Split," he said. "That one--see--with the bushy lot of
hair, singing and cake-walking in front. She can do a cake-walk better'n
any nigger I ever see."

"Indeed!"

"That's Frank, the baby--the one that's screamin' so. You can tell her
squeals; they're laughin' ones, you know."

"I suppose I ought to know. Anyway, I'm glad to be told."

"Over on the side there, where there's a kind of blotch, is the twins;
they must be fighting. Don, the dog, 's mixed up in it somehow."

"My word!" exclaimed the man, softly, to himself.

"That's Kate dancing round on the porch, and the one standing high-like,
right next to the fire, with her arms up stiff, as if she was running
the whole show, sort of--of--"

"A priestess, say, invocating the Goddess of Kerosene!"

"Huh?--Well, that's Sissy."

"Oh, is it? Tell me--is she nice--Sissy?"

"What?" asked the boy, so surprised that he withdrew his attention from
on high and stared out at the man on the door-step.

There came a laugh out of the darkness. "It is an odd question, but then
everything is so odd out here, I half hoped you wouldn't notice it. But
you do know them, evidently. I wonder--do you mind going up there with
me and showing me the way?"

But his last question had suddenly recalled to Jack Cody the reason why
he wasn't at that moment one of the dancing bl