That night Merriwell and Diamond went out to stroll around the village. Forest was tired, and he had gone to bed early. Browning and Dunnerwust also turned in shortly after supper, and Hodge, in one of his unsociable moods, was “flocking by himself.”

The sound of music from a building attracted Frank and Jack, and, on inquiring, they learned that a public dance was taking place there.

“Let’s go in,” laughed Merry.

Diamond drew back.

“I don’t think I care to go in there,” he said.

“Why not?”

“Think of the class of people we are sure to find there.”

Frank laughed.

“My dear boy,” he said, “that is the very reason why I wish to go in. It’s life, and I like to study life wherever I find it.”

Still Jack hesitated.

“Think of the rabble,” he said. “If we go there, we put ourselves on a level with that crowd.”

“Not necessarily. We can drop in and look on. We need not dance. I am going, whether you do or not.”

“Oh! well, I shall stand by you, Merry; but something tells me we had better keep out of that place.”

Laughing at this, Frank linked his arm with Jack’s, and[167] they climbed the stairs to the hall, paid the price of admission, and went in.

The hall was not large, and it was well filled. A contra dance, “The Lady of the Lake,” was taking place. The hall was poorly lighted with kerosene lamps. On a small stage at one end of the hall sat the musicians, three in number, a fiddler, a cornet player, and a chuck-headed youth who was pounding out chords on an antiquated piano that was sadly in need of tuning. The harmony of the music was not all that could have been desired, but what they lacked in harmony the musicians made up in noise and energy. The fiddler was sawing away at his instrument as if it were a stick of wood, the cornet player was purple in the face from his exertions, and the youth at the piano thumped the keys as if he were driving spikes.

Frank and Jack found a chance to sit down on a long bench that ran along the wall, and then they surveyed the remarkable scene.

The floor was almost crowded with dancers, and they were the strangest set Diamond had ever beheld. The female portion was attired in everything from a faded silk several years out of style to a brilliant pink calico with flowing sleeves and blue trimmings. The ladies wore their hair in “frizzes,” and bangs, and coils, and flowing ringlets, as suited their fancy. One old lady between fifty and sixty was prancing up and down the center with her partner in a kittenish manner, grinning in a fashion that betrayed the fact that she was minus several teeth, although she was well supplied with corkscrew curls, which bobbed and flapped about her face.

[168]

Some of the “gentlemen” wore their Sunday best, with a “boiled shirt” and paper collar. In many cases the paper collars were beginning to wilt, and, as he sat down, Merry saw one young man tear his off ruthlessly and fling it down on the floor, where it struck with a spat like unto that of a mud cake hurled against the side of a shed.

Not a few of the male dancers wore rough, every-day clothes and cow-hide boots. Some men were frisking around in moccasins, one of them, being uncomfortably warm, having removed his coat and vest and let down one suspender.

There were two red-shirted men in the hall who wore long-legged boots, into the tops of which their trousers were tucked. One man had a full black beard and a swarthy face. He was nearly six feet tall, but was so stocky that he did not look his height by three inches. His hands were big and thick, and his general appearance was that of a man possessing enormous strength. His eyes were red and his face flushed, while his manner told that he had been drinking. He was dancing with the prettiest girl in the hall.

The other red-shirted individual was wiry, slender and dark, with eyes set near together and seeming shifty and restless.

Merriwell immediately set him down as a French-Canadian.

Frank laughed softly as he watched the musicians and the dancers.

“What are you laughing at?” muttered Diamond.

[169]

“The whole business,” answered Frank. “By Jove! this is a circus! Aren’t you glad you came?”

“Don’t know that I am,” came sulkily from Jack.

“Well, I am,” declared Merry. “Wouldn’t have missed this for anything. I have seen all kinds of dances, but I think this takes the first prize.”

“Cattle!” growled Diamond.

Immediately Frank grew sober.

“I will guarantee there are brave men and true here,” he said, seriously. “Their ways are rough, but their hearts are all right.”

“Only cattle could enjoy anything like this,” declared Jack, stiffly.

“You are altogether too na............