espair, he stammered out: "Don't you think you could
find another boy in this town, Mr. Lord?"

Mr. Lord moved round sideways, in order to bring his crooked eye to bear
squarely on Toby, and then there was a long interval of silence, during
which time the boy's color rapidly came and went and his heart beat very
fast with suspense and fear.

"Well, what if I could?" he said, at length. "Do you think that trade
is so good I could afford to keep two boys, when there isn't half work
enough for one?"

Toby stirred the lemonade with renewed activity, as if by this process
he was making both it and his courage stronger, and said, in a low
voice, which Mr. Lord could scarcely hear:

"I didn't think that; but you see I ought to go home, for Uncle Dan'l
will worry about me; an', besides, I don't like a circus very well."

Again there was silence on Mr. Lord's part, and again the crooked eye
glowered down on Toby.

"So," he said--and Toby could see that his anger was rising very
fast--"you don't like a circus very well, an' you begin to think
that your uncle Daniel will worry about you, eh? Well, I want you to
understand that it don't make any difference to me whether you like a
circus or not, and I don't care how much your uncle Daniel worries.
You mean that you want to get away from me, after I've been to all the
trouble and expense of teaching you the business?"

Toby bent his head over the pail and stirred away as if for dear life.

"If you think you're going to get away from here until you've paid me
for all you've eat, an' all the time I've spent on you, you're mistaken,
that's all. You've had an easy time with me--too easy, in fact--and
that's what ails you. Now you just let me hear two words more out of
your head about going away--only two more--an' I'll show you what a
whipping is. I've only been playing with you before when you thought you
were getting a whipping; but you'll find out what it means if I so much
as see a thought in your eyes about goin' away. An' don't you dare to
try to give me the slip in the night an run away; for if you do I'll
follow you an' have you arrested. Now you mind your eye in the future."

It is impossible to say how much longer Mr. Lord might have continued
this tirade had not a member of the company--one of the principal
riders--called him to one side to speak with him.

Poor Toby was so much confused by the angry words which had followed his
very natural and certainly very reas