far as Engleton?
We've been on tramp this last week, an' we're both dead beat."

Bargee looked curiously at the speaker, a great, ill-looking fellow,
with coarse red hair and a crooked eye. From the man he glanced at his
companion, a tall, broadly-built woman, with bold black eyes, olive
skin, and flaming cheeks. They were the pair, in short, who had watched
Darby and Joan from behind the clump of hazel bushes as they sat upon
the tree-stump that day in Copsley Wood.

"Can't," said the young bargeman shortly. "It's against rules for this
yer boat to carry passengers."

"Ay, ay, I know all that; but just for once you might oblige a chap. We
could make it worth yer while," added the fellow insinuatingly.

"Do now," put in the woman in a wheedling voice, fixing her big, bold
eyes on bargee's face. "My feet's blistered, an' my legs that stiff I
couldn't walk another mile to save my life."

"Don't then," he answered shortly, preparing to push past her and get
into the boat.

But she clung to his hand, determined not to be thrown off, smiling
broadly into his dull face, almost dazzling him with the flash of her
strong white teeth, which she displayed so freely.

"Well, to be sure, who would think now that a fine feller like you could
be so hard-hearted! Sich a well-set-up lad," she continued, "an' with
sich a fetchin' kind o' look, shouldn't be backward in helpin' other
folks, especially a woman as is tired out like me."

"Can't you stop here overnight and rest, then? you'll be fit enough to
foot it to Engleton in the morning. Where's your hurry?" asked bargee,
beginning to relent under the smiling glances and flattering words of
the temptress.

"Well, it's this way," explained the red-haired man, fixing bargee with
his straight eye, while the crooked one gazed into space about half a
foot above his head. "We belongs to the Satellite Circus Company; we're
the proprietors, in fact, me an' my missis here--"

"You don't mean that old shandrydan of a caravan that passed along there
two or three days ago?" and bargee jerked his thumb in the direction of
the hilly tract sloping up from the canal course, through which a narrow
road, little better than a sheep track, wound its circuitous way. "Do
you call _yon_ a circus company?" he asked, laughing broadly into the
proprietor's ugly face.

"Undoubtedly--the Satellite Circus Company, as I think I remarked
before. We're a small party, small but select--_very_" and the
re