o anything else, for he had told all the boys
that day that he was going to do it; and when they just laughed, and
said, "Oh yes. Think you can fool your grandmother! It'll be like
running off with the Indians," Pony wagged his head, and said they would
see whether it would or not, and offered to bet them what they dared.

The morning of the circus day all the fellows went out to the
corporation line to meet the circus procession. There were ladies and
knights, the first thing, riding on spotted horses; and then a
band-chariot, all made up of swans and dragons. There were about twenty
baggage-wagons; but before you got to them there was the greatest thing
of all. It was a chariot drawn by twelve Shetland ponies, and it was
shaped like a big shell, and around in the bottom of the shell there
were little circus actors, boys and girls, dressed in their circus
clothes, and they all looked exactly like fairies. They scarce seemed
to see the fellows, as they ran alongside of their chariot, but Hen
Billard and Archy Hawkins, who were always cutting up, got close enough
to throw some peanuts to the circus boys, and some of the little circus
girls laughed, and the driver looked around and cracked his whip at the
fellows, and they all had to get out of the way then.

Jim Leonard said that the circus boys and girls were all stolen, and
nobody was allowed to come close to them for fear they would try to send
word to their friends. Some of the fellows did not believe it, and
wanted to know how he knew it; and he said he read it in a paper; after
that nobody could deny it. But he said that if you went with the circus
men of your own free will they would treat you first-rate; only they
would give you burnt brandy to keep you little; nothing else but burnt
brandy would do it, but that would do it, sure.

Pony was scared at first when he heard that most of the circus fellows
were stolen, but he thought if he went of his own accord he would be all
right. Still, he did not feel so much like running off with the circus
as he did before the circus came. He asked Jim Leonard whether the
circus men made all the children drink burnt brandy; and Archy Hawkins
and Hen Billard heard him ask, and began to mock him. They took him up
between them, one by his arms and the other by the legs, and ran along
with him, and kept saying, "Does it want to be a great big circus actor?
Then it shall, so it shall," and, "We'll tell the circus men to be very
c