At the corner where Acacia Grove met the High Street Rufus Cosgrave squirmed out of the pushing, jostling crowd and caught hold of him.  He was capless, panting.  His red hair stood on end.  In the flickering torch light he looked like a small, delirious Loga.

“I say—­Stonehouse—­I was coming for you—­it’s a circus—­they’re going all the way down to the Green—­they’ve got their tent there—­if we could only climb up somewhere—­I can’t see a thing—­not even the elephant’s legs.”

“If we cut round by Griffith’s Road we’ll get there first,” Robert shouted.  “Only we’ve got to run like mad.”

He seized Rufus by the hand and they shot free of the procession, up and down dim and decorous streets, swerving round corners and past astonished policemen whose “Now then, you young devils” was lost in the clatter of their feet.  Cosgrave gasped, but Robert’s hold was relentless, compelling.  He could have run faster by himself, but somehow he could not let Cosgrave go.  “You’ve got to stick it,” he hissed fiercely.  “It’s only a minute.”

Cosgrave had no choice but to “stick it.”  It did not even occur to him to resist though his eyes seemed to be bulging out of his head and his lungs on the point of bursting.  But the reward was near at hand.  There, at the bottom of Griffith’s Road, they could see it—­the Green, unfamiliar with its garish lights and the ghostly, gleaming tents.

“We’ve done it!” Robert shouted.  “Hurrah—­hurrah!”

They had, in fact, time to spare.  The procession was still only half-way down the High Street, a dull red glow, like the mouth of a fiery cave, widening with every minute as though to swallow them.  There was, indeed, a disconcerting crowd gathered round the chief entrance, but Robert was like a general, cool and vigorous, strung up to the finest pitch of cunning.  He wormed his way under the ropes, he edged and insinuated himself between the idle and good-natured onlookers, with Cosgrave, tossed and buffeted, but still in tow, struggling in the backwash.  At last they were through, next to the entrance, and in the very front row of all.

“Now you’ll see the elephant,” Robert laughed triumphantly, “every bit of him,”

“Oh, my word!” Cosgrave gasped.  “Oh, my word!”

It was coming.  It made itself felt even before it came into sight by the sudden tensity of the crowd, the anxious pressure from behind, the determined pushing back by the righteously indignant in front, the craning of necks, and indistinguishable, thrilling murmur.  A small boy, whom Robert recognized as the butcher’s son, evidently torn between the dignity and excitement of his new post, stalked ahead and thrust printed notices into the outstretched hands.  Robert seized hold of one, but he was too excited to read.  He felt Rufus poke him insistently.

“What’s it say—­what’s it say?”

“Shut up—­I don’t know—­look for yourself.”