would feel as I do about this business. Yon would know, as I do, that
this was no fake, but a square--A, number one--show, packed full and
running over with good things, worth ten times the price of admission.
You'd know that it was just the bulliest show ever seen on this little
old river, and you'd turn in with a will to help me prove it. I am a
stranger, just arrived in town, and never set eyes on this outfit
before; but I'm willing to put up my last dollar on the fact that this
show is so much better than I've said that as soon as you've seen it
once, you'll want to see it right over again, you'll come to it every
evening that it stays here, and then you'll follow it down the river on
the chance of seeing it again. Hello, inside! Turn on your steam, and
set your whirligig to moving."

By this time the good-nature of the audience was fully restored, and,
amid encouraging cries of "That's the talk!" "Ring the jingle-bell and
give her a full head!" "Sweep her out into the current and toot your
horn, stranger!" the panorama began slowly to unroll. The young man
picked up the pointer, and the moment the second picture--a lurid scene
that Cap'n Cod had entitled "The Burning of Moscow"--was fully exposed
to view, he began:

"There you have it, gentlemen! One of the most thrilling events of
this century. The great San Francisco fire of '55. City swept clean
from the face of the earth, and built up again, finer than before,
inside of a month. I tell you, fellows, those Californians are
rustlers! Why, I met a man out in 'Frisco last month whom I knew, two
years ago, as a raftsman on this very river at twenty a month and
found. To-day he is worth a cool million of dollars, and if you want
to know how he made it, I'll let you into the secret."

And so the young stranger rattled on with story and joke, never pausing
to study the panoramic scenes as they moved slowly along, but giving
each the first title that suggested itself, and working in descriptions
to fit the titles. He kept it up for more than an hour; and when
Sabella, who was watching him from the side scenes with admiring
wonder, called out softly that the picture he was then describing was
the last, he gracefully dismissed as delighted an audience as ever
attended a river show, and disappeared with them.

[Illustration: Billy Brackett is a friend in need.]

Billy Brackett had come up the Illinois side of the river by rail and
stage, and had been fer