Part 26 (1/2)

”I 'opes yer likes it! . . . We're in a tight corner, Arthur Miles, an'

nothing for it but bolt while they're talkin'.”

”We might hide here in the dark--but, of course, you know best.”

”O' course I do,” Tilda agreed. ”'Ide 'ere? An' who's to warn the Mortimers?”

She stooped and again caught 'Dolph under her arm. Then she straightened herself up and stood listening to the voices, clearly audible from the entrance of the store below.

”Tip-toe, mind! There's on'y a board between us--and quiet, for your life!”

They stole to the steps and paused for a moment, peering into the gloom.

Here too their enemies' voices were audible, but around the corner of the store, the coast was clear. They crept down the steps and gained the road. In the highway Tilda drew breath.

”Things look pretty bad,” she said; ”but things ain't altogether so bad as they look. Where we're goin' we'll find Bill; an' Bill's a tower o'

strength.”

”But we don't even know the way,” objected Arthur Miles.

”No, but 'Dolph does. 'Ere, 'Dolph”--she set down the dog--”you got to lead us where the others went; an' at the end of it there's a little surprise for yer. 'Ear?”

'Dolph heard, shook himself, wagged his tail, and padded forward into the gathering darkness; ran a little way and halted, until they overtook him. He understood.

”If they catch up with us we must nip into a gateway,” panted Tilda.

But as yet there was no sound of wheels on the road behind. They pa.s.sed the Hollys' cottage and stable, and braved the undiscovered country.

The road twisted between tall hedgerows, black in the shadow of elms.

No rain had fallen for many days, and the powdered dust lay so thick underfoot, that twice or thrice Tilda halted--still holding the boy's hand--in doubt if they had wandered off upon turf. But always, as they hesitated thus, 'Dolph came trotting back to rea.s.sure them.

In this manner, trotting and pausing, they had covered a bare three-quarters of a mile when there smote on their ears a throbbing of the air--a thud-thud which Arthur Miles took for the beat of a factory engine, so like it was to the echoes that had floated daily, and all day long, across the Orphanage wall; but Tilda, after hearkening a moment, announced it to be the ba.s.s of Gavel's steam organ. The hoot of a whistle presently confirmed her guess.

'Dolph was steering them steadily towards the sound; and a glow in the sky, right ahead and easily discernible, would have guided them even without his help. Tilda recognised that glow also.

”And the best is, it means Bill,” she promised.

But they did not catch the tune itself until they were close upon the meadow. At the top of a rise in the road it broke on them, the scene almost simultaneously with its music; and a strange scene it was, and curiously beautiful--a slope, and below the slope a gra.s.sy meadow set with elms; a blaze of light, here and there in the open s.p.a.ces; in one s.p.a.ce a steam roundabout revolving with mirrors, in another the soft glow of naphtha-lamps through tent cloth; glints of light on the boughs, dark shadows of foliage, a moving crowd, its murmur so silenced by music and the beat of a drum that it seemed to sway to and fro without sound, now pressing forward into the glare, now dissolving into the penumbra.

Arthur Miles paused, trembling. He had never seen the like. But Tilda had recovered all her courage.

”This,” she a.s.sured him, ”is a little bit of all right,” and taking his hand, led him down the slope and posted him in the shadow of a thorn-bush.

”Wait here,” she enjoined; and he waited, while she descended cautiously towards the roundabout with its revolving mirrors.

He lost sight of her. He lay still where she had commanded him to lie, watching the many twinkling lights, watching the roundabout turn and flash and come to a stop, watching the horseplay of boys and maidens as one set clambered off laughing and another pressed forward into their places. The tune droned in his ears, came to an end, went on again.

He drowsed to its recurrent beat. From his couch in the wet shadow he gazed up at the stars riding overhead, above the elms.

At the end of twenty minutes Tilda stole back to him; and, softly though she came, her footfall woke him out of his dreams with a start.

Yet, and though he could barely discern her from the shadow of the thorn-bush, he knew on the instant that she brought disappointment.