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The Black Cat

A Monthly Magazine of Original Short Stories.

Copyright, 1901, by The Shortstory Publishing Co. All rights reserved.

Entered at the Post-Office at Boston, Mass., as second-class matter.

The Black Cat is devoted exclusively to original, unusual, fascinating stories—every number is complete in itself. It publishes no serials, translations, borrowings, or stealings. It pays nothing for the name or reputation of a writer, but the highest price on record for Stories that are Stories, and it pays not according to length, but according to strength. To receive attention, manuscripts must be sent unrolled, fully prepaid, and accompanied by addressed and stamped envelope for return. All MSS. are received and returned at their writers' risk.

CAUTION.—The entire contents of The Black Cat are protected by copyright, and publishers everywhere are cautioned against reproducing any of the stories, either wholly or in part.

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Fifty Dollars' Margin.^[1]

by Paul Shoup.

OING!" said the auctioneer, impressively, shifting his footing upon the chair, one leg of which was sinking in the soil of Kansas. He lifted his hammer in front of Gunga Din, who regarded him with mild interest, and for a moment waited. Redfern's Colossal Three-Ringed Circus and Unparalleled Aggregation of Wild Beasts was indeed going. The season had been a disastrous one. The long stretches of russet prairie, of grain too short to cut, of sere cornstalks that, drooping, scarce reached the flanks of the cattle turned in to an early harvest, told the cause. At town after town the long tiers of blue benches had risen as if by magic into a great amphitheatre—to remain empty. The band, in faded uniforms, had played desperately on parade, at the tent entrance and inside—all to no purpose. The clown, in commemoration of the season, offered only what he called diy jokes. So, at the little town of Washita Falls, 'way out on the edge of prairie land, where the sun had gone down red all summer long behind a range of purple mountains, the circus came to a full stop. Not the African lion nor the

1. Copyright, 1901, by The Shortstory Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

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