LITMIR.BIZ

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and you ain't fixed for a job. P'raps you've no need fer one."

      Again Jack shook his head. He was not going to be communicative to this little man, and yet at the same time he could not afford to throw away a chance of help. If this stranger needed a man, why should he, Jack, not accept the post?

      "I'm ready for a job when I find one," he said quietly. "But I'm bound for the west."

      "And so am I, and I need someone to accompany me. See here," cried the little man, "you're a fair height, and would make up splendidly. I'll tell you what I'll do. I'll give you ten dollars a week and your food to come with me. You'll have to feed and mind the horses, and clean out the van. Then, when we set up shop at the towns, you'll have to dress up fine and come on the stage."

      "Stage!" exclaimed Jack, somewhat bewildered.

      "Jest so. I'll explain. I'm a travelling conjuror and mesmerist. I have to have help. Wall, to be candid, there are tricks that can't be worked without a second man. You'll have a beard and moustache, and will dress in a frockcoat, and all that, to look professional, and you'll hang about till I call for one of the audience to come on the stage. That'll be your chance. You'll hop up, and the trick will go like fire. And for the job, ten dollars a week, your grub, and lodging in the van. It's as snug as any house."

      It was a tempting offer, and Jack decided to accept it at once. But he asked another question.

      "How about California? I'm bound there, and must go. I warn you I could not stay very long in your service."

      "And no need. I'm makin' west, and you and me'll be strangers wherever we go. Leastwise, you will, for I've been along the route before. Wall, now, you'll get known, and ef on the return run the same man appears, and walks up on the stage, the people would spot something wrong and funny. You can leave at the end of the trip, and I'll pick up another man."

      "Then I accept," said Jack.

      He had been thinking keenly all the while, and saw in the offer now made him an excellent opportunity of obtaining work and a disguise at the same time. One thing, however, he did not like entirely. He asked himself whether he was to be a dupe, whether the post he had accepted would entail behaviour likely to gull the public. If that were so, he decided offhand that he would leave this little man promptly; for, though his position was critical, and arrest stared him in the face at any moment, Jack was not the one to lend himself to dishonesty.

      "I'm innocent, Heaven knows," he thought, somewhat bitterly, "and I have to clear myself of that crime for which I was about to be condemned. But I will not begin the task I have set myself by acting dishonestly in any way."

      "What name, please?" he asked.

      "Amos Shirley, at your service from right now."

      In the feeble light given by the solitary lamp the little man pulled off his huge hat with a theatrical gesture, and bobbed in Jack's direction. Indeed, looking at him there, he was, without doubt, a comical little man, full of his own importance, with plenty of humour and kindliness, and, if the truth be told, given not a little to pomposity.

      "Amos Shirley, conjuror, clairvoyant, mesmerist, known up and down the country. And you?"

      "Tom Starling," answered Jack, reddening under Amos's gaze, a fact which the little man noted, for he coughed significantly.

      "And I wish to say that I reserve the right of giving a week's notice at any time, and also that while I will help you willingly, and to the best of my ability, I will not lend myself to any underhand tricks, any sort of subterfuge, likely to gull your public."

      Amos Shirley gave vent to a shrill whistle.

      "Then the job's off," he said promptly, watching our hero closely. For this conjuring business was no easy one to manipulate, particularly with the intelligent people to be met with in America. Amos had before now discovered that an audience of miners, for instance, not wholly convinced of the genuineness of a trick, were apt to insist on embarrassing conditions, and were not above pelting the conjuror, or even perforating the stage with their bullets. He had, indeed, found before now that miners and cowboys required clever humouring; and while they were ready to pay liberally, and, indeed, to throw dollar notes on the stage if pleased in some particular, that they were at the same time a merry, high-spirited lot, apt now and again to become playfully reckless, and attempt a counter attraction, which chiefly took the form of showing how easily they could shoot the front lights of the stage away, or puncture the broad-brimmed hat of the conjuror with their bullets without doing any real harm.

      "I'm sorry," replied Jack. "Goody!"

      "Hold on. Say now," said Amos, feeling that he was about to lose a chance. "Who said there was any gulling?"

      "No one," answered our hero. "At the same time I gathered there might be some sort of wish on your part. I'll help in every way when it's a case of conjuring, for we all know that sleight of hand is required, and general smartness. But in mesmerism, or anything of that sort, I'll not take a hand."

      "Gee! That's straight. Say now," cried Amos, "I'll take you on those terms. You're a queer fish, you are, sticking out about such a trifle. But we won't quarrel. You will learn what's expected, and I've sufficient good tricks to play without overstepping your decision. Let's git along. Had any food?"

      For five weeks in succession our hero travelled west with Amos, and the two became excellent friends. He found the work to his liking, and the post an excellent passport. No one, unless well acquainted with Jack, could have detected in Amos's helper the escaped prisoner from Hopeville. The hair die disguised him well, while the beard and moustache he donned, as soon as the stage was erected before the travelling wagon, made him even more secure. But it is always the unforeseen that happens. One evening, when he had stepped on to the stage, dressed in top hat, frockcoat, beard, and moustache, to help his employer in some conjuring trick, his eyes, roaming over the faces of the collected audience, met one which was familiar. It was Simpkins, the constable from Hopeville, sharp and alert, closely inspecting his neighbours in the audience, and every person within his vision.

      CHAPTER V

      On the Railway

      As the constable's eyes travelled round the audience watching Amos Shirley's conjuring performance, and finally alighted on the stage, Jack felt as if he would have given anything if the rough boards beneath his feet would open. He sat in a chair, holding in his hand a handkerchief, in which his employer had, a moment or so before, wrapped a silver dollar, before the eyes of the gazer.

      "You are sure it is there, ain't yer, friends?" said the little man, stepping to the front of the stage, and wagging his head in a peculiar way he had. "Did I hear someone say it was not there? Yes, I guess so. Then will you please to open the handkerchief, sir, and show the audience whether it contains something or nothing."

      He tripped up to Jack, tapped the handkerchief with his wand, and displayed to the eyes of all the dollar he had placed there.

      "And now to proceed with the feat," he cried, in his most pompous manner. "We wrap the coin so, and thar ain't no mistake about it. That dollar's thar solid. Yer can hear the tap of the wand. It's thar, and in a moment I'll transfer it to the audience. Now, one, two, three. There she goes."

      He waved the wand again, and then caught the handkerchief from Jack's fingers.

      "Say, did yer feel it fly?" he asked.

      Simpkins's eyes were now on our hero, and for the moment the latter felt as if the constable were a snake whose gaze fascinated him. Jack was almost trembling. In his mind's eye he saw the cell from which he had so recently escaped, that sombre court in which the trial had proceeded, and in the near distance the prison to which he would be sent to spend ten solitary, hopeless years of his life. He could only shake his head to the question.

      "Yer didn't feel it fly. But it's gone. Ye're sure of that?"

      Jack nodded his head vigorously, while for one brief second he looked squarely into Simpkins's eyes. Did he see suspicion there? Or was that only a morbid fancy? The doubt was terrifying, and to speak the truth Jack Kingsley was at that moment as near to acting foolishly as ever in his life. The impulse was with him to leap to his feet, to jump from the platform, and race away for his life. For there

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