"I'd like to know where he keeps those deeds hidden," he said, apparently addressing his remark to a clump of weeds that grew by the roadside. The weeds withholding whatever information they may have had on the question, Colonel Witham snipped their heads off with a vicious sweep of his stick, and went on. "I don't know as it would do me any good to know," he continued, "but I'd just like to know, all the same." And James Ellison, his visitor departed, wandered about for some time through the rooms of his mill. One might have thought, from the sly and confidential way in which he drew an eye-lid down now and again, as he passed here and there, that the wink was directed at the mill itself, and that the crazy old structure was really in its owner's confidence; that perhaps the mill knew where the miller hid his papers. At all events, James Ellison, sitting down to his supper table that evening, was in a genial mood. "Lizzie," he said, smiling across the table at his wife, "I saw an old beau of yours to-day--Dan Witham. He didn't send any love to you, though." "No," responded Mrs. Ellison, and added, somewhat seriously, "and he has no love for you, either. I hope you don't have much business dealing with him." "Ho, he's all right, is Dan Witham," returned her husband. "He's gruff, but he's not such a bad sort. Those old times are all forgotten now." "I'm not so certain of that, James," said Mrs. Ellison. CHAPTER VI CAPTURING AN INDIAN Tim Reardon, a barefoot, sunburned urchin, who might be perhaps twelve years old, judging from his diminutive figure, and anywhere from that to fifteen, by the shrewdness of his face, stood, with arms akimbo, gazing in rapturous admiration at a bill-board. It was a gorgeous and thrilling sight that met his eyes. Lines in huge coloured letters, extending across the top of the board, proclaimed the subject of the display: Bagley & Blondin's Gigantic Circus Two Colossal Aggregations in One Stupendous--Startling--Scintillating Moral--Scientific Applauded by all the Crowned Heads of Europe. The pictorial nightmare that bore evidence to the veracity of these assertions was indeed wonderful and convincing. A trapeze performer, describing a series of turns in the air that would clearly take him from one end of the long bill-board to the other, was in manifest peril, should he miss the swinging trapeze at the finish of his flight, of landing within the wide open jaws of an enormous hippopotamus--designated in the picture as, "The Behemoth of Holy Writ." An alligator, sitting upright, and bearing the legend that he was one of the "Sacred Crocodiles of the Nile, to which the Indian Mothers Throw Their Babes," was leering with a hopeful smile at the proximity of a be-spangled lady equestrian, balanced on the tip of one toe upon the back of a galloping horse.