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“Good boys!” said the Italian with a smile, and he played another tune for them. And then it was time for him to travel on.

“Come along, Jacko!” he called to his monkey, and then he fastened the rope back on his monkey’s collar and made him jump up on the organ. Then the two of them went down the street.

“Oh, there he goes!” thought the poor Calico Clown, still up in the tree. “Oh, he’s going to leave me here! Oh, what shall I do?”

Well might he ask that. What could he do? How was he going to get down?

Herbert and Sidney, standing at the gate, saw the music man turn around the corner of the street.

“Now we’ll go back and play with my Monkey and your Clown,” said Herbert. “We’ll practice for the circus we’re going to have.”

“That’ll be fun!” laughed Sidney.

But when the two boys went back to the porch–well, you know, as well as I, what happened. They saw the Monkey on a Stick, but no Clown!

“Why–why, where is he?” asked Sidney, looking around. “Did you take him, Herb? Did you take my Calico Clown?”

“No, of course not,” answered Herbert. “They were both here when we went to get our bread and jam. Oh, Sid! I know what happened!” he suddenly exclaimed.

“What?” asked his brother.

“The hand-organ monkey took your Clown away with him!” went on Herbert.

At first Sidney thought that this might be so, but, after thinking over the matter for a moment, he shook his head and answered:

“No, the live monkey didn’t take my Clown. Don’t you remember? He came up here with his cap in his hand to get our pennies. Then, when he went away, he was sitting on top of the organ and he had his cap off and so did the music man, and they didn’t either of them have my Clown.”

“Yes, I guess that’s right,” Herbert said. “But he’s gone.”

“We’ve got to find my Clown,” said Sidney. “I want him back, and we can’t have a circus without him. We’ve GOT to find him.”

“Yes, we have,” agreed Herbert. “Maybe Carlo, the dog, came and carried him away.”

“Maybe,” said Sidney. They blamed lots of things on poor Carlo, and sometimes he did do tricks. But this was not one of those times. So the two boys began searching for the Calico Clown.

As for that jolly chap himself he was still up in the tree. And he was not so very jolly just then, either. He did not once think of asking his pig riddle.

“I wonder if I can wiggle down?” he asked himself. “There is no one to see me now, and I can move about. I’m going to try to get down.”

He wiggled and he woggled, whatever that is, and managed to get one leg over the limb, so both were on the same side. The Clown was just going to try to swing to the next lowest branch, as he had seen the live monkey do, when, all of a sudden, he slipped and fell.

“Oh, dear! Another accident! This is going to be a bad one–worse than the giant’s swing!” he cried.

Down, down, down, he fell. What was going to happen?

Now, just about this time, it chanced that a man was passing under the tree. This man had on a large, loose coat with large pockets on the sides, and he was so used to carrying things in his pockets that each nearly always stood wide open, like a hungry mouth, waiting for some one to fill it.

And, as luck would have it, the man came under the tree just as the Calico Clown slipped and fell. And so, instead of falling to the ground, the Clown fell into one of the wide open side pockets of the man’s coat. And the man never knew about it–at least for a time.

“Oh, my goodness me, what a narrow escape!” exclaimed the Clown as he landed safely in the soft pocket. “This is better than falling on the hard ground. But I wonder what will happen to me now.”