Arthur Stringer

“ Lonely seized the occasion to slip away and migrate to more settled quarters.
He found the open-mouthed and entranced Lionel Clarence, huddled up as close to the bass-drum as he could get, at one moment rocking and weeping tears of mirth over the introductory antics of the clowns and at the next gazing rapturously up at the crimson-clad La Belle Leona, little dreaming that the dust-stained boy at his side had that very morning worn the tights which now gyrated and twinkled so perilously high up on the swinging trapezes. ”

“ Once comfortably settled, however, the green boat was pushed stealthily off from shore, and with a face that might almost be said to wear a scowl of dark and resolute purpose old Cap'n Sands gave a word or two of command, pulled the little tiller-cord, and swung their craft round in pursuit of that undreaming demon of the deep, the Greyhound!
"The young limbs—he-he, we'll show 'em, eh, Silas!" he chuckled as he watched the steady and regular rise and fall of the other's neatly painted little green oars. "We'll show 'em, egad!" ”

“ It was all over, and for all time, between him and Annie Eliza. His awakening may have been a rude and chastening one, but through it he learned, as other warriors had learned, that women cannot make up all a man's world, that Calypso cannot always hold out her softer charms to a Ulysses, old or new, that the tawniest-haired Cleopatra cannot always bind a Cæsar in slavish bonds. He hungered once more for a world of arms and men, for the turbulence of his own kind, for the dust and battle of real boyhood! ”

“ It was the Lone Star, Chamboro's one permanent steamer, coughing and churning and wheezing upstream, with a small raft of logs at her heels.
And at the sight of her every member of that crew understood just what his Captain's thoughts had been! The Greyhound had found an enemy worthy of her mettle.
There was something intoxicating in the thought of ever taking a prize so ponderous. Yet every man on the Greyhound knew there was no other craft propelled by steam in those waters,—with the exception, of course, of the great excursion steamer that came up the river twice every week. ”

“ So the New Boy stepped to the sidewalk, and turned to his new-made fiefs with a sudden grandly impatient sweep of the arm.
"Now move on, you kids, while I finish my job here!"
At which off-hand yet dramatic climax the scattered little cluster of boys moved off and melted away, while Annie Eliza dutifully brought back Lonely his rubber window-cleaner. That trembling youth, with a smeared but happy grin through the glass at his not altogether displeased parent, waited only for solitude before escaping to the cool assuagement of the back-yard pump. ”

“ The lad's father went pale, as he broke into a run, and pantingly called back to old Doctor Ridley, puffing at his heels, the startling news that his son could not swim a stroke. Yet a moment later they saw the newly shorn head emerge from the water, saw the confident stroke and the business-like splutter from the lips. They both stopped speechless on the brink of the swimming-hole, scarcely able to believe their eyes, still too consumed with conflicting emotions to speak. ”

“ To Lonely it had seemed very slow traveling. For on his broken-springed and sadly overloaded wagon the adventurous Timothy O'Malley, lately returned from the gold-fields of the Klondike, carried not only all his goods and chattels, but also his own inebriate self and his pensive-browed, hollow-cheeked wife, to say nothing of a lusty-throated infant daughter, named Alaska Alice,—so christened in honor of the sturdy mustang which had once dragged the wandering gold-seeker over White Pass and delivered him for the last time from the hardships of a most inglorious and unremunerative vagabondage. ”

“ So it was Em'ly Bird's romance, bearing the dubious title of "Agatha Boring's Long Ordeal," into which Lonely first dipped. It was a startling new type of story to the eager and avid-minded boy,—like neither "The Headless Horseman" nor the "Swiss Family Robinson," for it told, in short sentences and easy words, of the suffering and heroism of Agatha Doring, tortured and ill-treated by an unconverted maiden aunt, who often sent the child to bed supperless, simply for being true to her own conscience, and often beat her, simply because she was so scrupulously honest. ”

“ If some one, indeed, had even whispered to you that there was a pirate ship coasting up and down the placid waters of the river and Watterson's Creek, flying its skull and crossbones in the very face of the solemn old town of Chamboro, you would have pooh-poohed the idea, and even inwardly chortled a bit, for if ever there was a sober and staid and sleepily respectable old town it was Chamboro. ”

“ Piggie's answer to this airy concession was a prompt and stinging kick on the shin-bone, for as a kicker the butcher's son was a finished artist. The sharp pain of this brought the New Boy to his senses. He gave over his bantam-cock antics, and closed hotly in on his adversary. Then the fight began in dead earnest.
But over this old and unlovely scene of two young savages pounding and tearing at one another tooth and nail let us draw the curtain. All boyhood, it is true, is sternly competitive; all boyhood is an eternal arena for the testing of muscle and wit. ”

“ Being a real and genuine circus biscuit, it was, obviously, something too consecrated to eat.
The fat woman laughed at this, and a moment later the whole table seemed smiling at Lonely, who drew back a little, abashed. Yet behind the cheery and grateful unconcern of his answering grin he had decided that at the first grain of encouragement from them he would forsake his home and his family and his half-finished air-ship, and run away with them for all time, to carry water and hay to the elephants for the rest of a happy, happy life. ”

“ This spot was Cap'n Steiner's orchard. For in that well-guarded little riverside domain bloomed the one tree of Chamboro's forbidden fruit, a strange and legendary thing, of more than earthly trunk and leaves, which made the old Captain's high board fence, militantly surmounted by a many-pronged barbed wire, seem strangely like the wall which once shut the children of Adam out of the Garden of Eden. ”

“ Whether or not Lonely was about to faint, history will never record. Whether or not it was the stern old face of Cap'n Steiner which brought back a rush of very recent memories and caused that artful simulation of utter weariness, far be it from his present biographer to say.
But he was promptly given a generous, an almost too generous, drink of cherry brandy, and even before Pauline Augusta was carried off to bed in the quiet, cool house, his old-time self-content had returned to him. Yet he was glad to be let alone. ”

“ The only thorn in his rose of perfect joy was the discovery that he had to be togged up as a young woman. But already it was too late to draw back, for as he entered the many-odored little dressing-tent, thronged with trunks and boxes and dresses and women busily engaged in flinging silver-spangled finery over their bare shoulders, Lonely was promptly seized by Cavarolla, the Queen of the Tight Rope, and as peremptorily and calmly deprived of his outer raiment as though he had been a head of lettuce being made ready for the cook-tent dinner. ”

“ So Lonely looked at Alaska Alice once more, half affectionately, half defiantly, and realized that his Waterloo was not far away. He made one desperate effort, while there was still time, to waken the grass-gorged and ruminant Plato from an attitude of hopeless and demeaning melancholy. This he tried to do by means of an adroitly flung pebble or two. Plato, however, instead of being stung out of his woe-begone abjection by these unjust missiles, merely whisked his thin tail languidly and stood on three legs, in meek and monumental pensiveness. ”

“ The Mayor of Chamboro, like the little town over which he held quiet sway, was of a somnolent turn of mind. It was only after a long and weary wait that Lonely, with his precious letter, once more made his winged way back to the circus grounds.
He found his friend of the cook-tent now mounted to a little office on wheels, the centre of a new world of activity, of hurrying men, and questioning attendants, and hastily dispatched orders. He took one sharp look at Lonely, caught the paper from his hand, ran his eye over it, and rattled out:
"Be at the ticket-wagon at one!" ”

“ The chorus of boy voices grew fainter and far away. They passed down through the watery Flats, and out through the wooded gloom of the Upper River.
Only now and then Lonely could hear a low little burst of laughter and calling, a muffled shout or two. Through the clear, opalescent air he caught sight of the smoke from their bonfire. He watched it drift and fade and melt down the river valley. A dog barked in the distance, dismally. The sun mounted higher and higher in the cloudless sky.
"'Laska Alice, do you know what you 've up and done?" sternly demanded Lonely. ”

“ Houses were opening up sleepily, shutters were being taken down from shop-windows, the streets were wakening to their first stir of life. And during that morning Lonely had already lived through so much! He had seen the elephants unloaded, and herded, and fed, the canvas unrolled, the main-top hoisted, the two sawdust rings laid out, the camels watered and groomed, the wagons of crimson and gold unhooded,—and last of all, he had taken the final step which led to the eternal glory and glitter of the circus tumbler. ”

“ Tied to the tail-board of the wagon with a piece of clothes-line, had followed Lonely's faithful goat, Gilead,—a stubbornly home-loving creature, who, on different occasions, had been duly sold or traded to nineteen youths of Cowansburg, only at the first opportunity to return to his original owner, with a blind and indomitable instinct that was as profitable as it was touching.
Lonely, for this overland journey through a new and unknown country, had armed himself with great care and forethought. ”

“ Men and women, together with small children who ought to have been abed hours before, stood grouped about a dark, low-lying mysterious form that swung in the water just under the nose of the Lone Star.
That mysterious form bore the ponderous official padlocks of the Corporation of Chamboro. And there it had been securely chained and imprisoned by that corporation's constable, after which solemn act he had plodded stolidly off to a belated supper, with lips pursed up in sphinx-like silence, quite satisfied with a hard day's work well done. ”

“ It was just at this point that the Lone Star came puffing importantly up, and from her engine-room was first seen that strange group of disheveled and bobbing heads.
Fathers who had been meekly ruminating as to how they had misunderstood their young sons, who had been thinking how much good there really had been in this or that particular boy, and how much more forbearing they ought to have been in the old days, suddenly grew worldly and cold and hard-hearted. And women who had been very quiet, and had said nothing, could no longer keep back the foolish tears. ”

“ LONELY O'MALLEY
CHAPTER I
In which Lonely finds himself an Outlander
THE sun mounted higher in the turquoise sky. The birds sang more sleepily. Faint and far away, from the flats down by the river, a few belated frogs still trebled and fluted. Then, lazily, the warm breeze stirred, and died away, and stirred again, scattering a drifting shower of cherry-blossoms through the heavy, indolent sunlight, murmurous with the hum and drone of many wings, where, for the hundredth time, a song-sparrow preached his vagabond philosophy of "Sweet! Sweet! Idleness—Idleness—idleness!" ”

“ The Doctor walked slowly over and put his kindly old hand on Lonely's sandy, bedraggled, and very unhappy head.
"Lonely, I 'm proud of you!" was all he said. But it was enough. He looked down into the boy's rebellious and unfathomable eyes, still slightly unsteady from the effects of Miss Arabella's too potent cherry brandy. Then he looked out at the quiet river, and at the huddled logs and the spot over which had hovered so closely the wing of tragedy. "You 're not cut out for a hero, my boy, but you almost made one!" ”

“ Back-aches and water-blisters, disappointments and humiliations, defeats and degradations,—all were forgotten under the magic spell of that soothing and caressing blue clay, and that dissolving, rejuvenating, lukewarm, yellow-tinted water of the sun-steeped swimming-hole. Cæsar took no thought of his crown; Antony had discovered something sweeter than ambition; Ponce de Leon had found something finer than Mexican gold!—the very fountain of youth and joy itself! ”

“ It was the time when the fat old constable grew more watchful and wary, when river-booms were unchained, and orchards were ravaged, and when young vagabonds, not two years out of skirts, rebelled against the cruel bondage of home life, and were apt to make for the woods to be Indians.
But with the purchase of the Maggie Watson—there, it slipped out before I could stop it!—with the purchase of the Greyhound, all of these trivial things were forgotten, and a new and richer coloring tinted existence. ”

“ He had just ordered the red-and-white clown not to make faces at Annie Eliza, when a piercing scream came from that young woman of unmatched loveliness, who sat on a white stool in the snake-cage, with languid serpents coiled and twined about her spangled hips. For somebody had fed chewing-tobacco to the snakes, and they had gone mad, and were squeezing their mistress to death, squeezing her until she grew visibly longer foot by foot, before Lonely's very eyes. ”

“ The newly arrived grandmother, indeed, would not even allow Lonely on the premises, and daily reported that Lionel Clarence's fever was worse, and flurried and worried about, drawing blinds, and issuing orders, and demanding silence. And Lionel, imprisoned in his hot and stuffy little room, looked petulantly out at the dreamy blue sky, and heard the play-cries and the street sounds, and hunted for cool spots on his pillow, and whined and cried a great deal, and devoutly wished that after all he had run off with the circus and been a pink lemonade man. ”