alked about with men and bundles on
their backs just as they do in eastern deserts, and there were wonderful
ladies who dressed and behaved like fairies, and who rode standing
tip-toe on the backs of horses and jumped through swinging rings. But
the crowd had not read the circus bills and the newspapers from all the
neighbouring cities for nothing. They were a canny Scotch crowd; they
were not to be taken in by mere glitter, no, not the smallest barefoot
boy nor the most wretched beggar, for they knew very well that the real
crisis of the evening was to be the appearance of Signor Lambetti, and
the word 'wonderful' was not to be spoken until his feats began to be
performed.

At length he came outside the curtain upon which all eyes had long been
fixed. The curl of his hair and the waxed ends of his moustache proved
him to be beyond doubt from foreign parts. He was indeed a most grand
and handsome gentleman. His dress was, if anything, more superb than it
had been in the pictures; all his well-formed muscles showed through the
silken gauze that he wore. His velvet trappings were trimmed with gold
lace and his medals shone like gold.

He walked upon a tight rope away up in the peaked roof of the tent; he
held a wand in his hand by which to balance himself and in the other
hand a cup of tea which he drank in the very middle of his walk;
tossing it off, bowing to the crowd below, and bringing the cup and
saucer to the other end in safety.

The crowd gave deep sighs, partly of satisfaction for being permitted to
see so wonderful a sight, partly out of relief for the safety of the
performer. 'Ay me,' they said to one another, 'did ye ever see the licht
o' that?' It meant more from them than the loudest clamour of applause,
yet they applauded also.

Then Signor Lambetti, looking quite as fresh and jaunty as at first,
ascended a small platform, standing out upon it in the full light of all
the lamps. He made a little speech to the effect that he was now going
to perform a feat which was so difficult and dangerous that hitherto he
had kept it solely for the benefit of crowned heads, before whom on many
occasions he had had the privilege of appearing. He said, in an airy
way, that the reason he did the town the honour of beholding this most
wonderful of all his feats was merely that he had taken a liking to the
place.

'Ay, but he's grond,' said the little barefoot boys to one another as
they huddled against the front of th