The only thing that worried Stetson was the fear that perhaps Bosko wouldn’t be able to keep up the part till the Amalgamated Shows came together in the fall. He had watched the “nigger” a good deal of late, and saw certain unmistakable signs. He was the only man in the show who knew the exact amount of the poison that Bosko drank every day before assuming his part, so he was in a position to read those signs very correctly. The first trouble came just after the circus struck Vermont. In the interval between the close of the afternoon and the beginning of the evening performance, Bosko went up street at a small town called Montpelier, and stayed till after time for the evening show to begin. Murphy and the camp doctor, Foley, were sent for him, and finally located him in the town jail. He had bought some alcohol at the local agency, prepared some “splits,” and drunk about a pint of the stuff. A few minutes later he had developed an acute attack of something so terrifying to some street urchins, who found him in a back street, that they had run to the only officer in town, and informed him that there was a mad man loose. After a certain amount of “fixing” with the high sheriff, who was also constable, health officer, and game warden, the doctor was finally allowed to take Bosko back to the circus grounds. But the “Strangest Freak” was not on exhibition that evening, being too busily engaged with snakes of his own, not furnished by the management of the Royal Roman Hippodrome. During the next week several changes were tried in regard to Bosko. He was given a decrease in pay and a decrease in liquor, as a punishment for his misdemeanor. This not being exactly what you might call a success, he was given a raise in pay, the decrease in whiskey still being continued. Fluctuations in salary proved, however, to have no effect on Bosko, so long as he was not allowed to spend the money according to his own lights. The arrangement which was finally settled upon was, therefore, a total discontinuance of pay and an increase in whiskey. Three days after the first trouble, even while an instalment of the afternoon’s crowd was eagerly watching the snake-eater and listening to Stetson’s description of him, Bosko was suddenly visited by his other collection of snakes. Carried away by the violence of the attack, but apparently from force of habit remembering his part, he gave an exhibition that day in the destruction of his companions of the pen, which, though rather expensive to Messrs. Poole Brothers, nevertheless made Bosko’s lifelong reputation as a snake-eater. Stetson, with true managerial instinct, made the most of the attack, and the receipts at Bosko’s platform on that day rivalled those of the main show. Admissions were put up to a quarter, but still the crowd which blocked the railing refused to diminish.