was mad cause they didn't deal him a hand. The minister adjourned the prayer meeting and whispered to Pa, and everybody went out holding their noses on account of Pa's fumery, and when Pa came home he asked Ma what he should do to be saved. Ma said she didn't know. The deakin told her Pa seemed wedded to his idols. Pa said the deakin better run his own idols, and Pa would run his. I don't know how it is going to turn out, but Pa says he is going to stick to the church.” CHAPTER XII. HIS PA GETS PULLED. THE OLD MAN STUDIES THE BIBLE--DANIEL IN THE LION'S DEN--THE MULE AND THE MULE'S FATHER--MURDER IN THE THIRD WARD--THE OLD MAN ARRESTED--THE OLD MAN FANS THE DUST OUT OF HIS SON'S PANTS. “What was you and your Ma down to the police station for so late last night?” asked the grocery man of the bad boy, as he kicked a dog away from a basket of peaches standing on the sidewalk “Your Ma seemed to be much affected.” “That's a family secret. But if you will give me some of those rotton peaches I will tell you, if you won't ever ask Pa how he came to be pulled by the police.” The grocery man told him to help himself out of the basket that the dog had been smelling of, and he filled his pockets, and the bosom of his flannel shirt, and his hat, and said: “Well, you know Pa is studying up on the Bible, and he is trying to get me interested, and he wants me to ask him questions, but if I ask him any questions that he can't answer, he gets mad. When I asked him about Daniel in the den of lions, and if he didn't think Dan was traveling with a show, and had the lions chloroformed, he said I was a scoffer, and would go to Gehenna. Now I don't want to go to Gehenna just for wanting to get posted in the show business of old times, do you? When Pa said Dan was saved from the jaws of the lions because he prayed three times every day, and had faith, I told him that was just what the duffer that goes into the lions den in Coup's circus did because I saw him in the dressing room, when me and my chum got in for carrying water for the elephant, and he was exhorting with a girl in tights who was going to ride two horses. Pa said I was mistaken, cause they never prayed in circus, 'cept the lemonade butchers. I guess I know when I hear a man pray. Coup's Daniel talked just like a deacon at class meeting, and told the girl to go to the place where the minister says we will all go if we don't do different. Pa says it is wicked to speak of Daniel in the same breath that you speak of a circus, so I am wicked I 'spose. Well, I couldn't help it and when he wanted me to ask him questions about Elijah going up in a chariot of fire, I asked him if he believed a chariot like the ones in the circus, with eight horses, could carry a man right up to the clouds, and Pa said of course it could. Then I asked him what they did with the horses after they got up there, or if the chariot kept running back and forth like a bust to a pic-nic, and whether they