y a blame sight!" snorted Buck. "You just climb out
and shut up and help me unharness old Pollyponeezus here."

Ten minutes afterward they had the canvas off the chariots and were
inspecting them by lantern light, chattering old reminiscences and
seeming almost to hear the "roomp-roomp" of the elephant and the snap
of the ringmaster's whip.

To the astonishment of Smyrna Corner, two plug hats, around which
wreaths of cigar smoke were cozily curling, blossomed on the platform
of the emporium next morning, instead of one. The old men had thirty
years of mutual confidences to impart, and set busily at it, the
parrot waddling the monotonous round of his cage overhead and rasping:

"Crack 'em down, gents! The old army game!"

In two weeks "Plug" Ivory and "Plug" Avery were as much fixtures in
the Smyrna scenery as the town pump. Occasionally of an evening the
wail of the snuffling accordion wavered out over the village. Buck,
his head thrown back and his eyes closed, seemed to get consoling
echoes of the past even from this lugubrious assault on Melody, and
loungers hovered at a respectful distance. No one dared to ask
questions, and in this respect the old men differed from the town pump
as features in the scenery.

Before a month had passed the two had so thoroughly renewed their
youth that they were discussing the expense of fitting out a
"hit-the-grit" circus, and were writing to the big shows for prices on
superannuated or "shopworn" animals.

It was voted that the dancing turkey and infant anaconda grafts were
no longer feasible. Once on a time the crowds would watch a turkey
hopping about on a hot tin to the rig-a-jig of a fiddle and would come
out satisfied that they had received their money's worth. A man could
even exhibit an angleworm in a bottle and call it the infant anaconda,
and escape being lynched. Brick Avery sadly testified to the passing
of those glorious days.

However, it was decided that a cage of white leghorn fowls, colored
with aniline dyes, could be shown even in these barren times as "Royal
South American Witherlicks"; that Joachim could be converted into a
passable zebra, and "Plug" Avery still had in his van the celluloid
lemon peel as well as the glass cube that created the illusion of ice
in the pink lemonade. The village painter was set at work on the new
gilding of the chariots in the big barn.

"Even if we don't really get away," explained Buck, "it's a good idea
to keep the prope