h
redoubled vigor. Yet it was in vain for him to rely upon the voice of an
approving conscience for peace in that hour of trouble. If he had not,
at that moment, been engaged in an act of disobedience, he might have
been easy. He had been strictly forbidden by Mr. Grant, and by Bertha,
ever to take Fanny out in a boat without permission; and Miss Fanny had
been as strictly forbidden to go with him, or with any of the servants,
without the express consent, each time, of her father or of Bertha.

It is very hard, while doing wrong in one thing, to enjoy an approving
conscience in another thing; and Noddy found it so in the present
instance. We do not mean to say that Noddy's conscience was of any great
account to him, or that the inward monitor caused his present
uneasiness. He had a conscience, but his vagabond life had demoralized
it in the first place, and it had not been sufficiently developed,
during his stay at Woodville, to abate very sensibly his anticipated
pleasure at the circus. His uneasiness was entirely selfish. He had got
into a scrape, whose probable consequences worried him more than his
conscience.

By the time the runaways reached Whitestone, the boat-house was all
burned up, and nothing but the curling smoke from the ruins visibly
reminded the transgressors of the event which had disturbed them.
Securing the boat in a proper place, Noddy conducted the young lady to
the large tent in which the circus company performed, and which was more
than a mile from the river. Fanny gave him the money, and Noddy
purchased two tickets, which admitted them to the interior of the tent.

If Noddy had been entirely at ease about the affair on the other side of
the river, no doubt he would have enjoyed the performance very much; but
in the midst of the "grand entree of all the horses and riders of the
troupe," the sorrowing face of Bertha Grant thrust itself between him
and the horsemen, to obscure his vision and diminish the cheap glories
of the gorgeous scene. When "the most daring rider in the world" danced
about, like a top, on the bare back of his "fiery, untamed steed," Noddy
was enthusiastic, and would have given a York shilling for the
privilege of trying to do it himself.

The "ground and lofty tumbling," with the exception of the spangled
tunics of the performers, hardly came up to his expectations; and he was
entirely satisfied that he could beat the best man among them at such
games. As the performance pr