“Then has anything happened to one of our crowd?” continued the scout master, a little vein of anxiety in his tone.
“Hugh, I’m only bothered about a boy I happened to run across,” explained Billy, evidently determined to make a clean breast of it, and take Hugh into his confidence.
“What sort of boy do you mean, and what has he been doing?”
“Why, you see he seems to be connected with one of those fakirs they’ve allowed to sell their wares in the grounds. This chap is a slick-looking article with the blackest eyes you ever saw, and such a queer light in them, too. Every time I felt them fixed on me it gave me the most awful feeling I ever knew. He saw me talking with Cale and must have guessed that he was starting to tell me how he wanted to break away from the fakir, but just couldn’t do it nohow. All at once Cale broke off in what he was saying, his voice drawled as if he was going to sleep, and would you believe it, he just turned his back on me and walked straight up to that fellow, who spoke to him fiercely in a low tone.”
“That sounds interesting, anyway, Billy,” remarked Hugh.
“I tell you,” asserted Billy, with sudden vigor in his voice, “that sneaky fakir has got some unnatural influence over that boy, so as to make him do whatever he wants. I don’t know much about it, but Hugh I honestly believe he’s hypnotized Cale!”
CHAPTER IV.
THE FAKIR AND HIS DUPE.
Hugh Hardin elevated his eyebrows at hearing Billy say this.
“I don’t take very much stock in anything of that sort, Billy,” he went on to remark, “though of course I know that one strong mind can gain more or less control over a weaker one, so as to make the other obey his will. But hypnotism is going further than that.”
“Well,” returned Billy, “you just wander around that way with me as if we wanted to look the freaks over, or listen to the patter of the fakirs who’re selling patent medicine and such things to the crowd, as well as telling them funny stories to keep them in good humor.”