ugh space
at each performance, and flung itself down with force enough to break
the neck of any unskilled rider. Courage and steady nerve were the
requisites for the job, so the manager had said; but any physician would
have told him that only a trained acrobat could long endure the nervous
strain, the muscular tension, and the physical rack of such an ordeal.

What matter? The few dollars earned in this way would mean a great deal
to the mother, whom the girl's marriage had left desolate.

Polly had looked on hungrily the night that the mother had taken the
daughter in her arms to say farewell in the little country town where
the circus had played before her marriage. She could remember no woman's
arms about HER, for it was fourteen years since tender hands had carried
her mother from the performers' tent into the moonlit lot to die. The
baby was so used to seeing "Mumsie" throw herself wearily on the ground
after coming out of the "big top" exhausted, that she crept to the
woman's side as usual that night, and gazed laughingly into the
sightless eyes, gurgling and prattling and stroking the unresponsive
face. There were tears from those who watched, but no word was spoken.

Clown Toby and the big "boss canvas-man" Jim had always taken turns
amusing and guarding little Polly, while her mother rode in the ring. So
Toby now carried the babe to another side of the lot, and Jim bore the
lifeless body of the mother to the distant ticket-wagon, now closed for
the night, and laid it upon the seller's cot.

"It's allus like this in the end," he murmured, as he drew a piece of
canvas over the white face and turned away to give orders to the men who
were beginning to load the "props" used earlier in the performance.

When the show moved on that night it was Jim's strong arms that lifted
the mite of a Polly close to his stalwart heart, and climbed with her to
the high seat on the head wagon. Uncle Toby was entrusted with the brown
satchel in which the mother had always carried Polly's scanty wardrobe.
It seemed to these two men that the eyes of the woman were fixed
steadily upon them.

Barker, the manager, a large, noisy, good-natured fellow, at first
mumbled something about the kid being "excess baggage," but his
objections were only half-hearted, for like the others, he was already
under the hypnotic spell of the baby's round, confiding eyes, and he
eventually contented himself with an occasional reprimand to Toby, who
wa