The horses began to canter forward, going briskly and swiftly side by side.  Greased Lightning’s coal-black eye was fixed upon Diana as she sat on Pole Star’s back.  Pole Star felt the feather-weight of the hot hand on his mane, the touch of the little feet somewhere near his neck.  There was a magnetic current of sympathy between the horse and the child.

“Think you’s a giant,” she said once to Orion, as she shot past him in the race.

The crowd, speechless with astonishment and delight for the first moment or two, now began to clap and cheer loudly.  Crack went Uncle Ben’s whip.  The circus girls in the wings, the men, the clown, all watched the little pair with beating hearts.  Diana they felt sure of, but what of little Orion?  And yet a change had come over the child.  His face was no longer pale; some of Diana’s spirit seemed to have entered into his soul.

The signal came for the pair to stand upon the bare, backs of their horses.  Little Orion scrambled as quickly and nimbly to his feet as Diana herself.  He caught the reins; crack again went the whip; the horses flew round and round.  Now and then Diana said a soft word to Greased Lightning; now and then she stamped her small foot on Pole Star’s neck.  Each movement, each glance of the child, seemed to thrill through the willing beast.  Incomprehensible as it may seem, both these wild, half-tamed creatures loved her.  They kept straight, veering neither to left nor right, for her sake.

The first part of the performance went safely through, but now came the more difficult and dangerous time.  The children were now not only to ride the horses standing, but they were obliged to ride holding one foot in the air, then to keep on their steeds standing on tiptoe, and finally they had to spring through great rings made of tissue paper, and leap again upon the horses as they galloped through.  Diana performed her task with unfailing exactness, always reaching the horse’s back at the right moment, springing up, sitting down, standing first on one foot, then on the other, being apparently on wires, afraid of nothing, triumphant through all.  Orion made a gallant effort to follow her example.  In two minutes now the whole thing would be over.

“Don’t be fwightened, Orion; time’s nearly up,” whispered the gay, brave little voice in his ear.

The horses flew, the children moved as if they were puppets, and all might now have been well if at that moment Diana herself—­Diana the fearless, the brave, the unconquerable—­had not slipped, slipped at the very moment when she was springing through one of the rings.  The horse galloped on without her, and she lay prone upon the floor of the circus.  Uncle Ben rushed madly to the rescue, and before Orion’s horse had reached the spot he had caught the child in his arms.  She was stunned by the fall, and lay white as death in his embrace.  The house thought the fall had killed her, and there was a horrified murmur; but Diana was only stunned.  In a moment she raised her cheery little voice.