"You might as well make a clean breast of the whole business, young man. I've caught you red-handed, snooping about the lot for two days quizzing everybody. Now what's the game?"

"There is no game."

"What is Sparling trying to find out?"

"You will have to ask him, I guess."

Sully surveyed the lad in silence for a minute or two.

"I couldn't understand, at first, why he should send a kid like you to spy upon us; but I begin to see that you are a sharp little monkey—"

Just then the showman was interrupted by the entrance of the foreman of the stake and chain gang.

"Bob, I want you to tell me exactly what questions this cub asked you yesterday?"

"I thought he was some curious town fellow, so I didn't pay much attention to his questions. When I saw him on the lot, again today, and heard him asking other folks, kind of careless like, I began to smell a rat."

"What did he want to know, I'm asking you?"