"He's in jail. About a month after you left he licked his new boy so bad that they arrested him, an' he got two years for it, 'cause it pretty nigh made a cripple out of the youngster."
Toby was about to make some reply; but Ben continued unfolding his budget of news.
"Castle staid with us till the season was over, an' then he went out West. I don't know whether he got his hair cut trying to show the Injuns how to ride, or not; but he never come back, an' nobody I ever saw has heard anything about him."
"Yes, they're still here; he's a leetle thinner, I believe, an' she's twenty pound heavier. She says she weighs fifty pounds more'n she did; but I don't believe that, even if she did strike for five dollars more a week this season on the strength of it, an' get it. They keep right on cookin' up dinners, an' invitin' of folks in, an' the skeleton gets choked about the same as when you was with the show. I don't know how it is that a feller so thin as Treat is can eat so much."
"Uncle Dan'l says it's 'cause he works so hard to get full," said Toby, quietly; "an' I shouldn't wonder if I grew as thin as the skeleton one of these days, for I eat jest as awful much as I used to."
"Well, you look as if you got about all you needed, at any rate," said Ben, as he mentally compared the plump boy at his side with the thin, frightened-looking one who had run away from the circus with his monkey on his shoulder and his bundle under his arm.
"Is Ella here?" asked Toby, after a pause, during which it seemed as if he were thinking of much the same thing that Ben was.
"Yes, an' she 'keeps talkin' about what big cards you an' her would have been if you had only staid with the show. But I'm glad you had pluck enough to run away, Toby, for a life like this ain't no fit one for boys."
"And I was glad to get back to Uncle Dan'l," said Toby, with a great deal of emphasis. "I wouldn't go away, without he wanted me to, if I could go with a circus seven times as large as this. Do you suppose young Stubbs would act bad if I was to take him for a walk?"
"Who?" asked Ben, looking down at the crowd of boys with no slight show of perplexity.
"Mr. Stubbs's brother," and Toby motioned to the door of the cage. "I'd like to take him up in my arms, cause it would seem so much like it used to before his brother died."