Mitch was gate-keeper and manager. We had some bills printed by Onstott, the printer, which said "Miller & Kirby's Renowned Circus and Menagerie" and a lot of things, naming the performers and all that. But I must say we had our troubles. First Kit O'Brien and his gang came down to break up the show. He tried to come in without payin', but Mitch settled old scores this time. He hit Kit a punch in the mouth and knocked out his baby teeth, which were danglin' and needed to be pulled anyway. He bled like a pig and ran up the hill hollerin', "I'll get even." But that settled that. Then Myrtle burned her mouth trying to chew cotton on fire, and Mitch's toe went back on him while hangin' from the trapeze. He fell, but didn't hurt himself much; only the audience laughed, even the princess Zueline in the box. I rode the pony pretty well, but he was too big for the ring in the barn, and Charley King who tried to sing "Never Take the Horseshoe from the Door" forgot part of it, and had to back into the corn crib which was the dressin' room. Outside of these things, the show was a success--only this was the day Mitch began to get acquainted with Charley King and George Heigold, which was a bad thing, as I'll tell later. So the circus was over and we took up the treasure again. Mitch said--we mustn't let another thing interfere. And so we went to work at Old Salem. As I said, we found a lot of old foundations and we scraped and dug around in all of 'em, mostly; and I never see so many snakes. Mitch could take a snake by the tail and crack his head off like a whip; but I was afraid to see him do it because there was hoop snakes around, and their tails is pisen. Nigger Dick told me he saw one roll down hill one time and just as it got to an oak tree, it took its tail out of its mouth and struck the tree with the stinger of its tail. The next morning all the leaves on the tree was withered. That is how pisen a hoop snake is. Well, of course there was lots of black snakes and they can wrap you. One wrapped Kit O'Brien once; and he waited till it got itself so tight that you could see through its skin, then he touched it with a knife and it bust in two and fell off of him. Well, we didn't find a thing, though once when we struck some tin cans, I thought sure we'd hit it. By and by one day when we was diggin', I looked up and saw an old feller standin' watchin' us. He was awful old, maybe more than eighty, and he just looked at Mitch and me and finally said, "Lost somethin', boys?" Mitch said: "I suppose you might say so till we find it." Then the old feller said: "I hope you'll find it, for you look hot workin' here in this hot sun, and you are workin', I declare." Mitch's face was red and he looked earnest, and I suppose I did too.