the golden day
approached, looming larger and larger upon the horizon as it came. In
the interim, how many a druggist bought his own bottles the third and
fourth time, how many a junk-dealer paid for his own iron, how many
bags of carpet rags went to the ragman, the world will never know.

[Illustration: _Piggy Pennington ... galloped his father's fat
delivery horse up and down the alley_.]

[Illustration: _Oil made by hanging a bottle of angle-worms in the sun
to fry_.]

[Illustration: _How many bags of carpet rags went to the ragman_.]

Now, among children of a larger growth, in festive times hostile
demonstrations cease; animosities are buried; but in Boyville a
North-ender is a North-ender, a South-ender is a South-ender, and a
meeting of the two is a fight. Boyville knows no times of truce. It
asks nor offers quarter. When warring clans come together, be it
workday, holiday, or even circus day, there is a clatter of clods,
a patter of feet, and retreating hoots of defiance. And because the
circus bill-boards were frequented by boys of all kiths and clans,
clashes occurred frequently, and Bud Perkins, who was the fighter of
the South End, had many a call to arms. Indeed, the approaching circus
unloosed the dogs of war rather than nestled the dove of peace. For
Bud Perkins, in a moment of pride, issued an ukase which forbade all
North End boys to look at a certain bill-board near his home. This
ukase and his strict enforcement of it made him the target of North
End wrath. Little Miss Morgan, his foster-mother, who had adopted him
at the death of his father the summer before the circus bills were
posted, could not understand how the lad managed to lose so many
buttons, nor how he kept tearing his clothes. She ascribed these
things to his antecedents and to his deficient training. She did
not know that Bud, whom she called Henry, and whose music on the
mouth-organ seemed to come from a shy and gentle soul, was the Terror
of the South End. Her guileless mind held no place for the important
fact that North End boys generally travelled by her door in pairs
for safety. Such is the blindness of women. Cupid probably got his
defective vision from his mother's side of the house.

The last half of the last week before circus day seemed a century to
Bud and his friends. Friday and Saturday crept by, and Mealy Jones
was the only boy at Sunday-school who knew the Golden Text, for an
inflammatory rumor that the circus was u