"All right," responded the proud owner of the pony and cart. "Pomp will get it for me."
"Good Lord!" Fred Dill said in his throat, and he went at once to Seth Woods's shoe-shop, where there was a group of loafers, and told the last bit of news. "I begin to think, boys," he said, "that Alf Henley is goin' to make the only money that dang circus ever made. Jest think of it—think of a big circus, hippodrome, menagery, an' side-shows tourin' the whole United States an' Canada without a cent of profit, an' a mountain storekeeper in a measly hole like this gitting rich out of its remains without turning his hand over or losin' a minute's sleep. It looks like thar is some'n crooked in the universe."
"It's beca'se the Lord's bent on smitin' sech cussedness with a broad hand," said a long-faced deacon, who had come in to half-sole his own shoes with the shoemaker's tools, and sat soaking his bits of leather in a tub of dingy water.
"I mought take yore view of it ef the reward was bestowed in a different quarter," Fred said, grimly. "But Alf don't go to meetin' any oftener'n I do. Though he kin send up as good a prayer as the next one when they force 'im to it. Boys, I'm curious to see what he will do with the tent an' lion's cage. Nothin' would surprise me now. He's dead sure to git profit out of 'em."
CHAPTER XIV
HAT very evening Henley took even another step in his amusing enterprise. He returned to the store after supper and sat writing letters till about eight o'clock. Then he got up, brushed his clothes, and made Pomp polish his boots, and adjusted his black string tie before a glass over the water-pail and basin. Then he went out and walked leisurely up the street till he came to the dark stairway of a little public hall over a feed-store. He ascended the steps with a respectful tread and entered the hall. It was furnished with crude unpainted benches and lighted by kerosene lamps in concave-mirrored brackets on the white walls. At the end stood a table holding a pitcher of water, a goblet, and a Bible, and behind the table sat an earnest-eyed, middle-aged evangelistic preacher, who bowed and smiled in agreeable surprise at the new-comer. The room held fifty or sixty men and women, all silently awaiting the beginning of the services. Henley seated himself on the front bench nearest the preacher, and put his hat on the floor, and dropped his handkerchief into it.
The meeting was opened with the singing by the congregation of familiar hymns, in which Henley joined harmoniously with a fair bass. It was known of him that he never declined an invitation to lead in prayer, and on being asked this evening he readily complied. His voice was deep and round and mellow, and the burden of his utterances was suitable to that or any other religious occasion, being a sort of singsong tribute to the eternal glory of humility and submission to the divine will. The prayer was followed by a rousing sermon from the preacher, and, in closing, he called attention, as Henley evidently had gathered from some source that he would do, to the future plans of the organization. The time was ripe for work in the highways and byways—the sowing of seed in out-of-the-way places, and the preacher was to "take the road" with one or two good singers, a cornet-player, and a cottage-organ, and give people in isolated mountain-nooks a chance to hear the Word and profit thereby for their eternal weal.
He had just seated himself and was mopping his perspiring brow when Henley rose and stood hemming and hawing and clearing his throat.