to prepare for the street parade. Little Jim Chute had been gloating
over the fact that it must pass by his house, and when it stopped
short under the elms in the dooryard his heart almost broke for joy.
He pinched the twenty-five-cent piece in his pocket to assure
himself that he was alive and in his right mind. The precious coin
had been the result of careful saving, and his hot, excited hands
had almost worn it thin. But alas for the vanity of human hopes!
When the magnificent red-and-gold "Cheriot" was uncovered,
that its glories might shine upon the waiting world, the door opened,
and a huddle of painted Indians tumbled out, ready to lead
the procession, or, if so disposed, to scalp the neighborhood.
Little Jim gave one panic-stricken look as they leaped over
the chariot steps, and then fled to the barn chamber, whence he had
to be dragged by his mother, and cuffed into willingness to attend
the spectacle that had once so dazzled his imagination.

On the eventful afternoon of the performance the road
was gay with teams. David and Samantha Milliken drove by in
Miss Cummin's neat carryall, two children on the back seat,
a will-o'-the-wisp baby girl held down by a serious boy.
Steve Webster was driving Doxy Morton in his mother's buggy.
Jabe Slocum, Pitt Packard, Brad Gibson, Cyse Higgins,
and scores of others were riding "shank's mare," as they
would have said.

It had been a close, warm day, and as the afternoon wore away it grew
hotter and closer. There was a dead calm in the air, a threatening blackness
in the west that made the farmers think anxiously of their hay. Presently the
thunderheads ran together into big black clouds, which melted in turn into
molten masses of smoky orange, so that the heavens were like burnished brass.