"I shall ask Colonel Grand to help me. He owns part of the show. His interest and mother's together are greater than yours—"
"Christine!" cried her mother, stunned.
His face went grayish white; the cigar hung loosely in his parted lips, and a thin stream of saliva oozed from the opposite corner. He tried to speak but could not. She unconsciously had struck a blow that hurt to his innermost, neglected soul.
"I'll show you who's boss of this show," he managed to articulate at last. Suddenly his knees gave way under him. He sagged heavily forward, dropping to the board seat. With one last desperate, stricken glare in his eyes, he lowered his head to his arms. A mighty sob of utter humiliation rent his body.
Mary Braddock hesitated for an instant, then impulsively laid her hand on her husband's shoulder. A wave of pity for this wretch surged into her heart.
"Don't, Thomas! Be a man! Everything will be well again, boy, if you'll only make a stand for yourself. I will help you—I will always help you, Tom. You know I—"
He shook off her pitying hand and struggled to his feet. Without a glance at her or at their terrified daughter, he flung himself from the tent and tore across the lot as though pursued by demons. By the time he found Colonel Grand and David in the animal tent, however, his blind rage had dwindled to ugly resentment; the overwhelming shame his own child had brought to the surface shrank back into the narrow selfishness from which, perhaps, it had sprung.
Five minutes before, he had wanted to kill. Now he was ready to compromise.
"Grand," he said hoarsely, "I'm going to sell out—I'm going to get out of this. I'm going to Cincinnati to-night and look up Barnum's man. He's ready to buy."
Colonel Grand eyed him shrewdly. He could see that something had shaken the man tremendously. The Colonel believed in strong measures. He knew precisely how to meet this man's impulses. In his time he had seen hundreds of desperate men.