g that Kathleen had insisted on giving him.
The dog had lost an ear, a forepaw and one eye; still he cherished it
because Kathleen had given it to him of her own free will, something
that Danny nor Chris nor Celia Jane nor even Nora had ever done.

He would wear the cap and overcoat, even if it was summer; then he
wouldn't get so tired carrying them. He put on the fur cap, pulling it
well down over his ears, and slipped into the overcoat. Slowly he took
up the woolly dog and started down the stairs. Then he remembered the
red mittens which a lady had brought him at Christmas, and returned to
get them. He put them on carefully, smoothing them over his hands, and
then went downstairs and out by the front door, prepared for any kind of
weather.

He was going to run away again, as he had from that man with the scarred
face. He heard the children shouting at their play and decided he would
first watch them a minute and perhaps let Danny know what he had driven
him into doing. He went down the alley which led past the woodshed,
behind which the circus performance was going on, and stopped to watch
with his face wedged between two pickets of the fence.

Nora was walking the rope slowly. She was doing it very well as long as
she kept one end of the balancing pole on the ground, but when she got
halfway across the rope, the end of the pole was so far behind that she
couldn't steady herself with it. She tried to drag it up even with her
and in so doing lost her balance and had to jump to the ground. As she
straightened up, she saw Jerry's face between the palings.

"There's Jerry!" she called to Danny.

"Thought you would play, after all," Danny remarked.

"I'm not," said Jerry.

"He's got his cap on!" laughed Celia Jane. "What've you got your cap on
for, Jerry?"

"And your overcoat?" said Nora.

"And your mittens?" chimed in Chris. "You ain't cold, are you?"

"I'm running away," Jerry responded, addressing no one in particular. He
tried to say it indifferently as though it were a matter of everyday
occurrence, this running away, but in spite of himself a note of pride
crept into his voice. None of them had ever run away.

"Running away!" gasped Celia Jane in an awed voice.

"Oh, Jerry, don't!" pleaded Nora.

Danny stared at him in open-mouthed amazement.

"I'm running away," Jerry repeated and sat down on the ground by the
fence where he had an unobstructed view of the circus.

CHAPTER V

THE GREEN ELEP