the knife thrower's assistant

At the age of eight, the third of five children, he ran away with a traveling act. A frail frame and disarming disposition made him a good target. With time and scars he learned to read a gnat's eye movement from a rope away and shift his body to evade the blade. When his head started sticking above the target frame, he left for the city, where he founded and profited from the pseudoscience of physiognomy until a robber baron who lost his estate in a game of chance convinced the authorities to declare him an enemy of the state.