“Yes, get down to business,” added another. “Right you are, young gentlemen,” admitted the voice, though Bill and Cap could not yet see the speaker. They observed their brother Pete beckoning frantically to them, and they increased their pace. “Right you are,” resumed the owner of the covered wagon. “The name of my noble animal is Pactolus, called after, I need not remind you—” “The river of Lydia in which the King Midas washed himself one Saturday night, so that he put the golden touch on everything,” interrupted one of the classical students, and there was a laugh, but it did not disconcert the traveling vendor, for such Bill and Cap now knew him to be. “Exactly,” he admitted. “The river whence ever after the visit of the king, the sands became golden. Thus I named my horse Pactolus in the hope that some day he might stumble into a river which, if it did not turn him to gold might at least make him a steed of silver. “But, young gentlemen of Westfield, which I understand is the name of the school in the distance, I did not attract you hither by the magic of my voice and playing to talk to you on classical subjects. This is a practical world, and we who live in it must also be practical. Whoa, there, Pactolus!” This as his steed showed signs of restiveness, due to the fact that some of the boys were tickling his ears. “Whoa, Pactolus. Never mind if some of your longer-eared brothers are whispering to you to entice you away to pastures green—stay you here!” This reference to donkeys had the effect of causing the mischief loving lads to hastily draw away from the horse, in some confusion, for there were snickers at their expense. “It is a practical world,” resumed the speaker, “and we must recognize that, and be practical ourselves. Now there is nothing more practical for the removal of any kind of misery, whether inward or outward, than my Peerless Permanent Pain Preventative, which is good for both man and beast, and eradicates all the ills that flesh is heir to, and some that it is not. Good for man and beast I repeat. See! I use it on myself,” and suiting the action to the word, the man, who had black flowing locks, as Bill and Cap could now see, and who wore light trousers, a red and green striped vest and a red shirt with black polka dots—this man vigorously rubbed some stuff from a bottle on his big forearm. “There I had a pain—’twas there, ’tis gone. ’Twas mine, ’tis yours—for the asking,” and he waved his hand toward the throng of students who laughed again, and seemed amused by the clatter of the traveling medicine man.