a boy about his own
age, with large brown eyes and white cheeks. He was dressed in
flesh-colored tights.

"Who are you?" asked Philemon, as the boy stared and half smiled.

"I'm the 'Phenomenal Trapezist,'" announced the lad, solemnly.

"What do you do?"

"Oh, I go up on the trapeze, at the tiptop of the tent, and my father
and uncle--they're the crack gymnasts, you know--they toss me about as
if I was a ball. By-and-by I'm going to learn to hang by my toes, and
take a flying leap, sixty foot, to the slack-rope near the ground."

"Aren't you frightened?" exclaimed Philemon.

"Ye--" began the boy, and then quickly changed his tone, as a man clad
in scarlet and gilt came near. "No, I ain't scared. I like it."

"Of course he ain't scared," said the man, roughly. "Come, Bill, it's
time for you and me to show ourselves."

They were joined by Bill's uncle, and the three passed into the outer
tent. Philemon put his eye against a hole in the canvas to watch them.

Like monkeys the two men and the child swung themselves aloft, and
reached the tent roof. Here they twisted, they turned, they made fearful
leaps from one trapeze to another, until Philemon trembled to see them.
At last both men hung by their knees, head downward, and Bill crept
carefully to the end of a long rope, gave a spring, and caught his
father's hands. There was an awful pause; then small Bill was sent
spinning through the air, sixty-five feet from the ground, to be caught
by his uncle, tossed back to his father, now seized by an arm, now by a
leg, now almost missed, now twirled round and round like a ball.
Philemon caught his breath, and stretched out his hand in an agony of
fear. His hand touched another, which was as cold as ice. Glancing up,
he found Madame Lucetta Almazida close by, her eye glued to another hole
in the canvas, her breath coming short and thick, her face livid and
drawn. Not knowing what she did, she clutched Philemon's hand, and he
heard her mutter,

"My baby! my baby!"

"Bill" was her own "Phenomenal Trapezist," and under Madame Lucetta
Almazida's shabby bodice a mother's heart beat wildly.

Philemon's heart beat too. What if he had been a "Bill," and his own
sweet mother had worn short skirts and ridden Pegasus? Horrible!

Poor Lucetta Almazida! Poor little Bill!

But there was time to think of them no more. The band of negro minstrels
was ready to sing. A clown seized Philemon's hand, and hurried him into
the ring. Th