Chapter I.



On a certain summer day, a few years ago, the little village of
Briggsville, in Pennsylvania, was thrown into a state of excitement, the
like of which was never known since the fearful night, a hundred years
before, when a band of red men descended like a cyclone upon the little
hamlet with its block-house, and left barely a dozen settlers alive to
tell the story of the visitation to their descendants.

Tom Gordon lived a mile from Briggsville with his widowed mother and his
Aunt Cynthia, a sister to his father, who had died five years before.

The boy had no brother or sister; and as he was bright, truthful,
good-tempered, quick of perception, and obedient, it can be well
understood that he was the pride and hope of his mother and aunt, whose
circumstances were of the humblest nature. He attended the village school,
where he was the most popular and promising of the threescore pupils
under the care of the crabbed Mr. Jenkins. He was as active of body as
mind, and took the lead among boys of his own age in athletic sports and
feats of dexterity.

One summer day the village of Briggsville blazed out in black and red and
white, every available space being covered with immense posters, which in
flaming scenes and gigantic type announced the coming of "Jones's & Co.'s
Great Moral Menagerie and Transcontinental Circus, on its triumphal tour
through the United States and Canada."