rest among the carts and donkeys, and not coming
out again until the heat was over. Many a time, too, was Punch displayed
in the full glory of his humor; but all this while the eye of Thomas
Codlin was upon them, and to escape without notice was almost
impossible.

At length, late in the day, Mr. Codlin pitched the show in a spot right
in the middle of the crowd, and the Punch and Judy were surrounded by
people who were watching the performance.

Short was moving the images, and knocking them in the fury of the combat
against the sides of the show, the people were looking on with laughing
faces, and Mr. Codlin's face showed a grim smile as his roving eye
detected the hands of thieves in the crowd going into waistcoat pockets.
If Nell and her grandfather were ever to get away unseen, that was the
very moment. They seized it, and fled.

They made a path through booths and carriages and throngs of people, and
never once stopped to look behind. The bell was ringing, and the course
was cleared by the time they reached the ropes, but they dashed across
it, paying no attention to the shouts and screeching that assailed them
for breaking in it, and, creeping under the brow of the hill at a quick
pace, made for the open fields. At last they were free from Codlin and
Short.

That night they reached a little village in a woody hollow. The village
schoolmaster, a good and gentle man, pitying their weariness, and
attracted by the child's sweetness and modesty, gave them a lodging for
the night; nor would he let them leave him until two days more had
passed.

They journeyed on, when the time came that they must wander forth again,
by pleasant country lanes; and as they passed, watching the birds that
perched and twittered in the branches overhead, or listening to the
songs that broke the happy silence, their hearts were peaceful and free
from care. But by-and-by they came to a long winding road which
lengthened out far into the distance, and though they still kept on, it
was at a much slower pace, for they were now very weary.

The afternoon had worn away into a beautiful evening, when they arrived
at a point where the road made a sharp turn and struck across a common.
On the border of this common, and close to the hedge which divided it
from the cultivated fields, a caravan was drawn up to rest; upon which
they came so suddenly that they could not have avoided it if they would.
Do you know what a "caravan" is? It is a sort o