"They settled in the country, where Aaron was born, and a few years after, for reasons unknown, Menning deserted her. Then, for the first time, she seems to have remembered Jakey, now growing to an age when he might begin to make himself useful about the farm. She set about claiming him. The circus people, from what I could hear, made some opposition. Jakey was being trained as an acrobat and showed some promise, though he was a difficult child to manage. Moreover, they had kept him all this time and expected some return. Times, however, were slack, they probably foresaw trouble with the school inspectors also, and in the end they let the boy go. "He worked about the farm, off and on, for some eight or ten years, and got himself thoroughly disliked, as you know, by all the Mennings' neighbours. The criminal streak in him was already apparent, though in those days it only took the form of spitefulness and mental deficiency. He was idle and vagrant and finally, at about seventeen years old, took himself off one fine day and went back to the travelling show, which he managed to trace up through the Pottsville saloon-keeper. They took him back as an extra hand, to help with the wagons. He was not good enough for a performer, his training being interrupted, but the proprietor about that time had the idea of running one or two freak side-shows, and they tried Jakey out as the hoary old fake of 'wild man.'" Herrick paused a moment to light a fresh cigarette, and in that instant I saw Lennox's eye turn to me with something very like relief. "It seems," Herrick went on, "that he was quite a successful attraction and I can certainly believe it. There was naturally something apish and uncouth about him, and very little make-up would have turned the trick most naturalistically. He stayed with the show nearly two years, doing odd jobs by day and playing his wild-man stunt at the performances. And then some sort of queer thing must have happened. "I couldn't get the whole truth of it from the Pottsville brother, who told me most of the story. Either he didn't know or he was unwilling to tell, but the gist of it is that there was some row and Jakey got suddenly fired. From what the Pottsville brother 'guessed,' Jakey played his rôle too realistically, and the proprietor refused then and there to keep him another day. He had a little money in his pockets, he turned up in Pottsville, where he hung about for two or three days, and then made his way back to the farm.