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Then something happened!

One of the circus men must have been sleepy that morning, for he hadn’t fixed the lock on that cage just tight. And the big tiger felt very mean that day. He snarled and he snarled, and he jumped at the bars of his cage.

Open came the door. Out leaped that wicked tiger right on the street, and the people ran pell mell in all directions.

The two fat men were so frightened that they fell flat on their stomachs. The barber shinnied up his pole, and hung on for dear life to the top. The baker-man tumbled into the watering-trough, and all the rest rushed higgledy-piggledy into the houses and stores.

The Toyman picked up Hepzebiah, Marmaduke, and Jehosophat, hurried them into the candy-store, and shut the door tight.

It was full of beautiful candies,–chocolate creams and peppermint drops, snowy white cocoanut cakes, black and white licorice sticks, and cherry-red lollypops. But the three children never noticed those lovely candies at all. They just looked out of the glass door at that tiger, walking up and down the street, a-showing his teeth and a-swishing his tail.

The tiger looked at all the people behind the windows and doors. They were all shivering in their boots, and he didn’t know which one to choose. Then he looked up at the man on the barber-pole, and he was shivering too.

Then all of a sudden the tiger stopped.

“Girrrrrrrrrrrhhh!”

He saw the butcher shop.

The door was open. Some nice red pieces of beef hung on the hooks.

He licked his chops and ran into the shop and jumped up at the first piece of beef and ate it all up. He never saw the stout butcher, who was hiding under the chopping block. The butcher’s face was usually as red as the beef, but now it was as white as his apron, and his feet were shaking as fast as leaves in the wind.

But just as the tiger was gobbling the last morsel up, down the street galloped a cowboy on a swift horse. He stopped right in front of the butcher shop.

Out went his hand.

In it was a rope all coiled up.

Around his head he twirled it, in great flying loops. Then he let it fly.

And it fell around that wicked tiger’s head and neck, just as he was finishing his dinner.

Then the circus men came with big steel forks, and they ran at that tiger, and they tied him all up in that rope very tight, and put him back in the cage on the wagon, while he growled and growled and growled.

So the parade started again and all of the people came out of their hiding-places, all but the fat men who hurried off home, as soon as they found their breath, and the old ladies who said they guessed they’d go to missionary meeting after all. A circus parade was too heathenish.

Soon it was all over, and the rest of the people hurried off to the field with the big white tents.

And what they saw there we will tell you tomorrow night.