"Now, boys," he proclaimed, and for a moment his thin squeak weighted with importance gained a hearing--"now, boys," said the barber, "this little feller's father is an extinguished new denizen of Banbridge, and you ain't treatin' of him with proper disrespect. Now--" But then his voice was drowned in a wilder outburst than ever. The little crowd of men and boys went fairly mad with hysterical joy of mirth, as an American crowd will when once overcome by the humor of the situation in the midst of their stress of life. They now laughed at the little barber and the boy. The old familiar butt had joined forces with the new ones. "They have formed a trust," said Amidon, deserting his partisanship, now that it had assumed this phase of harmless jocularity. But the boy at bay, as the laughter at his expense increased, was fairly frantic. He lost what he had hitherto retained, his self-possession. "I tell you I did!" he suddenly screamed out, in a sweet screech, like an angry bird, which commanded the ears of the crowd from its strangeness. "I tell you I did have an elephant, I did ride him, and I did have a circus every Saturday afternoon, so there!" The "so there" was tremendous. The words vanished in the sound. The boyish expression denoting triumphant climax became individual, the language of one soul. He fired the words at them all like a charge of shot. There was a pause of a second, then the laughter and mocking were recommencing. But Anderson took advantage of the lull. "See here, boys," he shouted, "there's been enough of this. What is it to you whether he had a dozen elephants and rode them all at once, and had a circus every day in the week with a dozen tame bears thrown in? Clear out and go home and get your dinners. Clear out! Vamoose! Scatter!" His tone was at once angry and appealing. It implied authority and comradeship. Anderson had given great promise as a speaker during his college course. He was a man who, if he exerted himself, could gauge the temper of a mob. The men on the outskirts began moving away easily; the boys followed their example. The little barber took the boy familiarly by the arm. "Now, you look at here," said he. "Don't you hev them chaps a-pesterin' of you no more, an' ef they do, you jest streak right into my parlor an' I'll take care of ye. See?" The boy twitched his arm away and eyed the barber witheringly. "I don't want anything to do with you nor your old barber-shop," said he. "You had better run along, John," said Anderson to the barber, who was staring amazedly, although the complacent smirk upon his face was undiminished. "I guess he's a child kinder given to speakin' at tandem," he said, as he complied with Anderson's advice. The boy turned at once to the man. "What business had that barber telling me to go into his old barber-shop?" demanded he. "I ain't afraid of all the boys in this one-horse town." "Of course not," said Anderson.