If one can go far enough back to remember the awe and mystery surrounding a circus, and then imagine a circus coming bodily to lodge in one's own dwelling, to eat with the knives and forks at one's table--a circus which could swallow fire and swords, and things of that sort, just eating off plates in the ordinary manner, with Sissy waiting on the table behind its chairs--if one can get back to this happy time, it will be possible to comprehend some of the rapture the twins, Gess and Tell, experienced while Frosty La Rue's show abode at the Wagon-Tire House. They lorded it over every other child in Blowout, shining with reflected splendor. They were the most sought after of any of the boys in school, for Romey was too young to afford information. La Rue himself looked upon them and said that they were "likely little fellers," and that he "wouldn't mind having them to train." Think of that! To train! Aunt Huldah, with bat-like blindness to their best advantages, had stated to Mr. La Rue that their father was in--well--in Kansas, and had only left them with her, as it were, "on demand." For one dreadful moment the twins envied Aunt Huldah's real orphans. Then, realizing that Aunt Huldah would no more give up Sissy or Ally than she would give up them, they reflected that the ambition of boys is apt, in this cold, unsympathetic world, to be thwarted by their elders, and settled down to the more active and thorough enjoyment of what they might have. The company consisted of old La Rue; his second wife, who figured upon the bill as Signorina Ippolita di Castelli, an ex-circus rider of very mature years; Frosty's factotum, a Mexican by the name of Jose Romero; little Roy, the Aerial Wonder, son of Frosty and the Signorina; and last and most important of all, Minnie La Rue. The show was well known in the Texas cattle country, and well loved. Frosty's daughter--she was only sixteen when he was last at Blowout, more than a year ago--was a pretty little thing, and her father had trained her to be a graceful tight-rope performer. He himself did some shooting from horseback, which most of the cowboys who applauded it could have beaten. Frosty La Rue drank hard, and he was very surly when he was drinking. Even Aunt Huldah's boundless charity found it difficult to speak well of his treatment of Minnie. The Signorina could take care of herself--and of the Aerial Wonder as well. But the heft of her father's temper, and sometimes the weight of his hand also, fell on the young girl when things went amiss. And things had gone amiss, more particularly in regard to her, during the last six months. Up to that time she had looked like a child, small for her age, silent, with big, wistful eyes, deft, clever fingers, and a voice and manner that charmed every audience--in short, the most valuable piece of property in La Rue's outfit.