“I went under my clothes for my money-belt, and counted him out forty twenty-dollar gold certificates.

“ ‘I’ll just take him into my own room,’ says I, ‘and lock him up till after breakfast.’

“I took the pig by the hind leg. He turned on a squeal like the steam calliope at the circus.

“ ‘Let me tote him in for you,’ says Rufe; and he picks up the beast under one arm, holding his snout with the other hand, and packs him into my room like a sleeping baby.

“After breakfast Rufe, who had a chronic case of haberdashery ever since I got his trousseau, says he believes he will amble down to Misfitzky’s and look over some royal-purple socks. And them I got as busy as a one-armed man with the nettlerash pasting on wallpaper. I found an old negro man with an express wagon to hire; and we tied the pig in a sack and drove down to the circus grounds.

“I found George B. Tapley in a little tent with a window flap open. He was a fattish man with an immediate eye, in a black skull-cap, with a four-ounce diamond screwed into the bosom of his red sweater.

“ ‘Are you George B. Tapley?’ I asks.

“ ‘I swear it,’ says he.

“ ‘Well, I’ve got it,’ says I.

“ ‘Designate,’ says he. ‘Are you the guinea pigs for the Asiatic python or the alfalfa for the sacred buffalo?’

“ ‘Neither,’ says I. ‘I’ve got Beppo, the educated hog, in a sack in that wagon. I found him rooting up the flowers in my front yard this morning. I’ll take the five thousand dollars in large bills, if it’s handy.’

“George B. hustles out of his tent, and asks me to follow. We went into one of the side-shows. In there was a jet-black pig with a pink ribbon around his neck lying on some hay and eating carrots that a man was feeding to him.

“ ‘Hey, Mac,’ calls G. B. ‘Nothing wrong with the world-wide this morning, is there?’

“ ‘Him? No,’ says the man. ‘He’s got an appetite like a chorus girl at 1 a.m.’

“ ‘How’d you get this pipe?’ says Tapley to me. ‘Eating too many pork chops last night?’

“I pulls out the paper and shows him the ad.

“ ‘Fake,’ says he. ‘Don’t know anything about it. You’ve beheld with your own eyes the marvellous, world- wide porcine wonder of the four-footed kingdom eating with preternatural sagacity his matutinal meal, unstrayed and unstole. Good morning.’

“I was beginning to see. I got in the wagon and told Uncle Ned to drive to the most adjacent orifice of the nearest alley. There I took out my pig, got the range carefully for the other opening, set his sights, and gave him such a kick that he went out the other end of the alley twenty feet ahead of his squeal.

“Then I paid Uncle Ned his fifty cents, and walked down to the newspaper office. I wanted to hear it in cold syllables. I got the advertising man to his window.

“ ‘To decide a bet,’ says I, ‘wasn’t the man who had this ad. put in last night short and fat, with long, black whiskers and a club-foot?’

“ ‘He was not,’ says the man. ‘He would measure about six feet by four and a half inches, with corn-silk hair, and dressed like the pansies of the conservatory.’