all.

* * * * *

The afternoon before the "circus" the little settlement more than ever
took on the appearance of a medieval village ... almost everybody took
turns in participating in the "circus" ... almost everybody togged out
in costume. But first we had a parade of the "guilds" ... the Actors'
Guild, in which Hildreth bore a part; in her pretty tights she looked
like a handsome boy page in some early Italian prince's court.

Don Grahame was the son of the leader of the community whom Jones had
promised to rake over the coals that night, after the circus.

Don led the Carpenters' Guild, looking like nothing else than a handsome
boy Christ. Don, secretly disliking in his heart the free-love doctrines
his father and others taught (though he always rose loyally in his
father's defence) had gone to the other extreme, he lived an ascetic,
virgin life. But it didn't seem to hurt him. He was as handsome as
Hildreth was beautiful.

Everybody liked the young fellow. He had sworn that he would maintain
his manner of abstinent living till he fell in love with a girl who
loved him in return. Then they would live together....

That, he maintained, was the true and only meaning of free love. He had
no use for varietism nor promiscuity.

The Guilds paraded twice around the Village Green, led by the Guild of
Music Masters, who played excellently well.

The Children's Guild was a romping, lovely sight.

* * * * *

The circus was held shortly afterward in the huge communal barn, in the
centre of its great floor,--the spectators seated about on the sides....

There was the trick mule, made up of two men under an ox-hide, the mule
fell apart and precipitated Don Grahame in between its two halves ...
each half then ran away in opposite directions.

Don rode so well that that was the only way they (I mean the mule) could
unseat him. He won much affectionate applause.

Then there was the fearful, great boa-constrictor ... which turned out
to be a double-jointed, lithe, acrobatic, boy-like girl whom we knew as
Jessie ... Jessie, they whispered, was marked for death by consumption,
if she didn't look out and stop smoking so many cigarettes ... she was
slender and pretty--but spoke with an adenoidal thickness of speech.

The colony was as merry as if no storm impended.

We adjourned for supper.

After supper, under the evening star we marched back to the barn aga