band struck up
a new and livelier note. The tight-rope dancer sprang lightly into the
ring and went through her hazardous feats with smiling face and airy
self-confidence; the elephants ascended absurdly small stools, and
stood upon them, "lookin' terribly silly, as if they knew they were
makin' guys of themselves," so Mike Martin exclaimed, though he still
kept his fascinated eyes upon their every movement. There was the
usual bareback riding and jumping through rings: the trapeze, and the
pony quadrille; in short, all that could be expected of any well
conducted "Show," while above all and below all sounded the clown's
voice in a ceaseless clatter and cackle of nonsense.

Laughter and badinage, peanuts and pink lemonade; men and women turned
back to childhood, smiling at the foolishness enacted before them but
more at their own in thus enjoying it; and the "Learned Blacksmith"
who had pondered many books finding this company around him the most
interesting study of them all.

It was this that he loved about a circus; and, to-day, at their first
one, the faces of Ananias and Sapphira held his gaze enthralled.

"Dolly, Dolly Doodles! Do watch them!" he cried for sympathy in his
delight. "Did ever you see eyes so bright? Mouths so wide agape? and
happiness so intense! Ah! if those to whom they belong could see them
now, all hardness would vanish in a flash!"

Dorothy looked as he desired, but her glance was less of admiration
than of anxiety. She had seen what he did not see and was hearing what
he did not; a face and figure somberly different from the tri-colored
one of the clown, and a voice more raucously insistent than his.

All at once the twins also saw and heard. Their attention was
clutched, as it were, from those adorable monkeys a-horseback, which
had come once more to the very spot before where they stood, and whom
in their baby-souls they envied frantically.

"HIM!" shrieked Ananias.

"H-I-M!" echoed Sapphira, all her pretty pink-and-whiteness turned the
pallor of fear.

There was a flash of bare feet and blue-denimed legs and the terrified
twins had leaped the velvet-topped barrier bordering the ring and were
scurrying heedlessly away, how and where they cared not except to be
safe from that "Him" whose memory was a pain.

"My soul! They'll be killed--the little rascals!" cried Jim, and
leaped the barrier, in pursuit.

"He can't catch 'em! I'll help!" and fat Monty rolled himself over the
fence