FACING
PAGE
PLANNING THE CIRCUS 14

MR. AND MRS. TREAT EXHIBIT PRIVATELY 92

TOBY RESCUES THE CROWING HEN FROM MR. STUBBS'S BROTHER 234

MR. STUBBS'S BROTHER

CHAPTER I

THE SCHEME

"Why, we could start a circus jest as easy as a wink, Toby, 'cause you
know all about one an' all you'd have to do would be to tell us fellers
what to do, an' we'd 'tend to the rest."

"Yes; but you see we hain't got a tent, or bosses, or wagons, or
nothin', an' I don't see how you could get a circus up that way;" and
the speaker hugged his knees as he rocked himself to and fro in a musing
way on the rather sharp point of a large rock, on which he had seated
himself in order to hear what his companions had to say that was so
important.

"Will you come down with me to Bob Atwood's, an' see what he says about
it?"

"Yes, I'll do that if you'll come out afterwards for a game of I-spy
'round the meetin'-house."

"All right; if we can find enough of the other fellers, I will."

Then the boys slipped down from the rocks, found the cows, and drove
them home as the preface to their visit to Bob Atwood's.

The boy who was so anxious to start a circus was a little fellow with
such a wonderful amount of remarkably red hair that he was seldom called
anything but Reddy, although his name was known--by his parents, at
least--to be Walter Grant. His companion was Toby Tyler, a boy who, a
year before, had thought it would be a very pleasant thing to run away
from his Uncle Daniel and the town of Guilford in order to be with a
circus, and who, in ten weeks, was only too glad to run back home as
rapidly as possible.

During the first few months of his return, very many brilliant offers
had been made Toby by his companions to induce him to aid them in
starting an amateur circus; but he had refused to have anything to do
with the schemes, and for several reasons. During the ten weeks he had
been away, he had seen quite as much of a circus life as he cared to
see, without even such a mild dose as would be this amateur show; and,
again, whenever he thought of the matter, the remembrance of the death
of his monkey, Mr. Stubbs, would come upon him so vividly, and cause him
so much sorrow, that he resolutely put the matter from his mind.