“But I don’t see what he has to do with—­with—­” Arthur Miles hesitated before the terrible name.

“Glasson?  Oh, nothin’; on’y ten to one Gavel’s met with the Mortimers, an’, Glasson bein’ on the track already—­W’y, what elst is the man ’ere for?”

“He shan’t take me,” said the boy after a pause, and in a strained low voice which, nevertheless, had no tremor in it.  “Not if I throw myself off the ladder.”

“You stop that talk, please,” threatened Tilda.  “It’s wicked; an’ besides, they ‘aven’t caught us yet.  Do what I tell yer, an’ stand by to bolt.”

She crept to the other door, which commanded the canal front, unbarred it softly, and opened the upper hatch a few inches.  Through this aperture, by standing on tip-toe, she could watch the meeting of the two men.

“When I call, run for yer life.”

But a minute—­two minutes—­passed, and the command did not come.  Arthur Miles, posted by the bolt-hole, held his breath at the sound of voices without, by the waterside.  The tones of one he recognised with a shiver.  They were raised, and although he could not catch the words, apparently in altercation.  Forgetting orders, he tip-toed across to Tilda’s elbow.

Mr. James Gavel, proprietor of Imperial Steam Roundabouts—­as well as of half a dozen side-shows, including a Fat Lady and a Try-your-Strength machine—­was a small man with a purplish nose and a temper kept irritable by alcohol; and to-day the Fates had conspired to rub that temper on the raw.  He swore aloud, and partly believed, that ever since coming to Henley-in-Arden he was bewitched.

He had come at the instance, and upon the guarantee, of Sir Elphinstone Breward, Baronet, C.B., K.C.V.O., a local landowner, who, happening to visit Warwick on County Council business, which in its turn happened to coincide with a fair day, had been greatly struck by the title “Imperial” painted over Mr. Gavel’s show, and with soldierly promptness had engaged the whole outfit—­Roundabouts, Fat Lady and all—­for his forthcoming Primrose Fete.

If beside his addiction to alcohol Mr. Gavel had a weakness, it was the equally British one of worshipping a title.  Flattered by the honest baronet’s invitation, he had met it almost more than half-way; and had dispatched six of his shabbiest horses to Birmingham to be repainted for the fete, and labelled “Kitchener,” “Bobs,” “Cecil Rhodes,” “Doctor Jim,” “Our Joe,” and “Strathcona”—­names (as he observed) altogether more up to date than the “Black Prince,” “Brown Bess,” “Saladin,” and others they superseded.

Respect for his patron had further prompted Mr. Gavel, on the morning of the fete, to don a furred overcoat, and to swear off drink for the day.  This abstinence, laudable in itself, disastrously affected his temper, and brought him before noon into wordy conflict with his engineer.  The quarrel, suppressed for the time, flamed out afresh in the afternoon, and, unfortunately, at a moment when Sir Elphinstone, as chairman, was introducing the star orator from London.  Opprobrious words had reached the ears of the company gathered on the platform, and Sir Elphinstone had interrupted his remarks about Bucking Up and Thinking Imperially to send a policeman through the crowd with instructions to stop that damned brawling.