"By thunder, if he thinks I'm going to let him gobble up that kid's money, he's mistaken. Why didn't I think of this before? I might have known. It's the long green he's after. I wonder who told him about the two thousand." He scratched his head in sudden perplexity. "I wonder what's got into Dick Cronk. He's too blamed good, all of a sudden. That brother of his might try the job, but--no, he'd bungle it. Besides, he'd probably stick a knife into Davy if the kid made a motion." He began chewing a fresh cigar; his pop-eyes were leveled with unseeing fierceness at a certain patch in the "main top"; his brain was seeing nothing but that packet of banknotes. How to get it into his possession: that was the question that produced the undiverted stare and the lowering droop at the corners of his mouth. "I've got to get that wad," he was saying to himself, over and over again, with almost tearful insistence. Driven by the value of propinquity, he finally made his way to the dressing-tent. The performers were surprised to find him unnaturally sober and quite jovial. A certain nervousness marked his manner. He chatted amiably with the leading men and women in his company; the fact that he removed the cigar from his lips while conversing with Ruby Noakes and the Iron-jawed Woman, created no little amazement in them. He was especially gentle with his wife, and superlatively so with his daughter, both of whom were slow to show the slightest sense of responsive warmth. He proudly, almost belligerently, proclaimed Christine to be the loveliest creature that ever stepped into the sawdust ring. In spite of that fact, however, it was his plan to have her retire at the end of the season, when, if all went well, she was to go to a splendid school for young ladies. Mrs. Braddock eyed him narrowly. She was searching for the cause of this sudden ebullience, this astounding surrender to her own views regarding their daughter. As for Christine, she was more afraid of him than she had been in all her life. This new mood suggested some vague, undefinable trouble for her mother. The girl's rapidly developing estimate of her father was taking away all the illusions she had been innocently cherishing up to the last few weeks. To her horror, she was beginning to look for something sinister in all that he undertook to do or say. Unable to face the speculative anxiety in the eyes of his wife and child, Braddock edged off to the men's section of the tent. His furtive, nervous glances about the small apartment escaped the notice of the men who were changing their apparel. To his own disgust, a cold perspiration began to ooze out all over his body--the moisture of extreme nervousness and indecision. He took a stiff pull at his brandy flask.