The same
price fer each-an-devery individual, lady and gent, man, wummin, wife and
child, and happiness to one and all fer a quat-of-a-dollah!"
Down the middle of the street, kept open between the waiting crowd, ran
barefoot boys, many of whom had not slept at home, but had kept vigil in
the night mists for the coming of the show, and, having seen the muffled
pageant arrive, swathed, and with no pomp and panoply, had returned to
town, rioting through jewelled cobwebs in the morning fields, happy in the
pride of knowledge of what went on behind the scenes. To-night, or
to-morrow, the runaways would face a woodshed reckoning with outraged
ancestry; but now they caracoled in the dust with no thought of the grim
deeds to be done upon them.
In the court-house yard, and so sinning in the very eye of the law, two
swarthy, shifty-looking gentlemen were operating (with some greasy walnut
shells and a pea) what the fanciful or unsophisticated might have been
pleased to call a game of chance; and the most intent spectator of the
group around them was Mr. James Bardlock, the Town Marshal. He was simply
and unofficially and earnestly interested. Thus the eye of Justice may not
be said to have winked upon the nefariousness now under its vision; it
gazed with strong curiosity, an itch to dabble, and (it must be admitted)
a growing hope of profit.
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