half-price. Don't forget day and date. H. Frost, Manager."

While Sam read, the other boys had been gloating over the enticing
pictures which covered the bill. There was the golden car, filled with
noble beings in helmets, all playing on immense trumpets; the
twenty-four prancing steeds with manes, tails, and feathered heads
tossing in the breeze; the clowns, the tumblers, the strong men, and
the riders flying about in the air as if the laws of gravitation no
longer existed. But, best of all, was the grand conglomeration of
animals where the giraffe appears to stand on the elephant's back, the
zebra to be jumping over the seal, the hippopotamus to be lunching off
a couple of crocodiles, and lions and tigers to be raining down in all
directions with their mouths wide open and their tails as stiff as that
of the famous Northumberland House lion.

"Cricky! wouldn't I like to see that," said little Cyrus Fay, devoutly
hoping that the cage, in which this pleasing spectacle took place, was
a very strong one.

"You never would, it's only a picture! That, now, is something like,"
and Ben, who had pricked up his ears at the word "circus," laid his
finger on a smaller cut of a man hanging by the back of his neck with a
child in each hand, two men suspended from his feet, and the third
swinging forward to alight on his head.

"I'm going," said Sam, with calm decision, for this superb array of
unknown pleasures fired his soul and made him forget his weight.

"How will you fix it?" asked Ben, fingering the bill with a nervous
thrill all through his wiry limbs, just as he used to feel it when his