"You don't know me?" said the stranger.
"No, sir."
"And yet you have done me a very great service."
"I didn't know it, sir."
"The greatest service that any one person can do to another—you have saved my life."
Then a light dawned upon Kit's mind, and he remembered what Achilles Henderson had said to him in the morning.
"Is your name Dupont?" he asked.
"Yes; I am Joe Dupont, the clown, whom you saved from a horrible death. I tell you, when Nero stood there in the ring with his paw on my breast I gave myself up for lost. I expected to be torn to pieces. It was an awful moment!" and the clown shuddered at the picture which his imagination conjured up. "Yes, sir; I wouldn't see such another moment for all the money Barlow is worth. I wonder my hair didn't turn white."
"Excuse me, Mr. Dupont, but I find it hard to think you are Joe Dupont, the clown," said Kit.
"Why?"