As he spoke, the stranger removed his hat and displayed his
clean-shaven pate.

'Yer don't understand that, eh? That 'ere means I had my ha'r lifted
ten years ago. The Sioux war the skunks that done it. After they took
my top-knot off. It had grow'd on ag'in and that's why they call me
Baldy.'

In the mean time the door had been closed, and all secured. The hat of
the steam man emptied its smoke and steam into a section of
stove-pipe, which led into the chimney, so that no suspicion of
anything unusual could disturb the passers-by in the street.

'You see it won't do to let him walk here, for when I tried it first,
he went straight through the side of the house; but you can tell by
the way in which he moves his legs, whether he is able to walk or
not.'

'That's the way we ginerally gits the p'ints of an animal,' returned
Baldy, with great complaisance, as he seated himself upon a bench to
watch the performance.

It required the boy but a short time to generate a sufficient quantity
of steam to set the legs going at a terrific rate, varying the
proceedings by letting some of the vapor through the whistle which
composed the steam man's nose.

Baldy Bicknell stood for some minutes with a surprise too great to
allow him to speak. Wonderful as was the mechanism, yet the boy who
had constructed it was still more worthy of wonder. When the steam had