circus
went languidly; but when, on the third morning, he saw the posters
about the town, and when one happened to be pasted up exactly opposite
his own circus, he began to cool down and to change his mind.

"Where are you, Sarah?" he called out.

His wife flew to answer the fierce summons of her lord and master.

"I'm here, Ben," she answered.

"'I'm here, Ben,'" he retorted, mimicking her tone. "There you are,
Sarah, without the sperit of a mouse. Have you seen, or have you not,
what's up all over the town?"

"Yes, to be sure," replied Sarah Holt; "and it's a faithful
description of the children. Why, they are as like what that
description says of 'em as two peas, Ben."

"I'm not saying they aint," snapped Ben, in a very indignant voice;
"but what I do want to know is this--what's to be done if they are
found and we are discovered to have bought 'em? We had all our plans
arranged, and we have taken this field for a fortnight; but, bad as
the loss will be to ourselves, it'll be better than the perlice
discovering that we had anything to do with them children. The fact is
this, Sarah: I'm going to pack our traps and be off out of this,
to-night at the latest."

"Perhaps you are right, Ben," said the woman, in a very sad tone;
"only," she added, with a sigh, "if we are really going, may not I run
up to Delaney Manor and just give 'em a hint? It seems so dreadful to
me if anything should happen to them little kids, more particular to
little Diana, who was the mortal image of my Rachel who died."

"If you do anything of the kind I'll kill you," roared the man. "Do
you want to see me locked up in prison for kidnaping children? No; we
must be out of this to-night, and I must lose the ten pund I paid for
the use of the field."

By this time the news of the posters had spread not only through the
whole town, but amongst the members of Ben Holt's troupe. The men and
women in the troupe were all interested and excited, and whenever they
had a spare moment they used to run out to read the poster which
Fortune had been clever enough to dictate.

Meanwhile, that good woman herself was by no means idle.

"I have done something," she said to Iris, "and what I have done at
Madersley ought to have been done before now all over the length and
breadth of England. But now, Miss Iris, having put the posters up, it
doesn't mean that we are to be idle. We have got to do more. I have my
eye on that circus. They says it's a very