"Let's ask that big boy there about them; he belongs to the show."
The young man to whom they alluded stood a short distance off, with a long whip in his hand, watching the operations of those who were erecting the canvas. He was quite red in the face, had a bushy head of hair almost of the same hue, and was anything but attractive in appearance.
His trousers were tucked in his boot-tops; he wore a blue shirt, sombrero-like hat, and was smoking a strong briar-wood pipe, occasionally indulging in some remark in which there was a shocking amount of profanity.
The boys started toward him, and had nearly reached him when Jimmy Emery said in an excited undertone:
"Why, don't you see who he is? He's Bud Heyland."
"So he is. His father told me last spring he had gone off to join a circus, but I forgot all about it."
Bud Heyland was the son of Michael Heyland, the man who did the work for the sisters Perkinpine, and before he left was known as the bully of the neighborhood.
He was a year or two older than the oldest in school, and he played the tyrant among the other youngsters, whose life sometimes became a burden to them when he was near.
He generally punished two or three of the lads each day after school for some imaginary offense. If they told the teacher, he would scold and threaten Bud, who would tell some outlandish falsehood, and then whip the boys again for telling tales.