Toby heard a sort of gurgling sound, saw the driver's body sway back and forth in a trembling way, and was just becoming thoroughly alarmed, when he thought of the previous night, and understood that Ben was only laughing in his own peculiar way. "How did you know his name was Stubbs?" asked Ben, after he had recovered his breath. "Oh, I don't know that that is his real name," was the quick reply; "I only call him that because he looks so much like a feller with that name that I knew at home. He don't seem to mind because I call him Stubbs." Ben looked at Toby earnestly for a moment, acting all the time as if he wanted to laugh again, but didn't dare to, for fear he might burst a blood-vessel; and then he said, as he patted him on the shoulder, "Well, you are the queerest little fish that I ever saw in all my travels. You seem to think that that monkey knows all you say to him." "I'm sure he does," said Toby, positively. "He don't say anything right out to me, but he knows everything I tell him. Do you suppose he could talk if he tried to?" "Look here, Mr. Toby Tyler"--and Ben turned half around in his seat and looked Toby full in the face, so as to give more emphasis to his words--"are you heathen enough to think that that monkey could talk if he wanted to?" "I know I hain't a heathen," said Toby, thoughtfully, "for if I had been some of the missionaries would have found me out a good while ago; but I never saw anybody like this old Mr. Stubbs before, an' I thought he could talk if he wanted to, just as the Living Skeleton does, or his wife. Anyhow, Mr. Stubbs winks at me; an' how could he do that if he didn't know what I've been sayin' to him?" "Look here, my son," said Ben, in a most fatherly fashion, "monkeys hain't anything but beasts, an' they don't know how to talk any more than they know what you say to 'em." "Didn't you ever hear any of them speak a word?" "Never. I've been in a circus, man an' boy, nigh on to forty years, an' I never seen nothin' in a monkey more'n any other beast, except their awful mischiefness." "Well," said Toby, still unconvinced, "I believe Mr. Stubbs knows what I say to him, anyway." "Now don't be foolish, Toby," pleaded Ben. "You can't show me one thing that a monkey ever did because you told him to." Just at that moment Toby felt some one pulling at the back of his coat, and looking round he saw it was a little brown hand, reaching through the bars of the air-hole of the cage, that was tugging away at his coat. "There!" he said, triumphantly, to Ben. "Look there! I told Mr. Stubbs if he wanted anything more to eat, to tell me, an' I would give it to him. Now you can see for yourself that he's come for it." And Toby took a doughnut from his pocket and put it into the tiny hand, which was immediately withdrawn. "Now what do you think of Mr. Stubbs knowing what I say to him?"