Then you'll be punished as you deserve," he added loftily.

But as Darby uttered this threat a wave of memory swept over him with an overwhelming rush. Father! what could _he_ do to help or deliver them, away in Africa, or maybe lying dead somewhere? Joe and Moll might ill-treat them as they chose before father should be able to interfere.

And mother! Father in Africa or killed, mother in heaven! and with one bitter, thrilling cry the boy's brave spirit gave way, and he sank unconscious at Joe Harris's feet.

Mr. Harris gave expression to his amus.e.m.e.nt in a whistle.

"That's capital!" he cried; "the best piece o' actin' I've seed this many's the day! Eh, Bambo, what do you think o' _that_ for an amatoor?

Why, it 'ud bring down the house, I declare!"

But Bambo did not answer, not by so much as a single glance. He was crouching on the gra.s.s beside the boy.

Then Joe shoved the sobbing Joan aside, stooped over the limp figure of the child, and satisfied himself that he had only fainted. Afterwards he followed his wife within the caravan, whistling gaily as he went.

Tonio, the negro lad, slid near the group, and with wide, rolling eyes stared at Darby's motionless form and white face. Bruno had rolled himself up again comfortably, and was preparing to resume his nap just where he had left off when his master so rudely aroused him. Joan had hushed her sobs, although now and again a long, shuddering sigh shook her little body from head to foot, as with small, smudgy fingers she gently stroked her brother's cheek. Puck, the monkey, had skipped nimbly from his perch on the chimney of the caravan and found another more to his mind on top of Tonio's woolly head, where he sat glowering and grinning at the group, as if he wanted to ask, only he couldn't in words, "What's the matter, friends? what's to do?"

Bambo raised the boy from the gra.s.s, pillowed the drooping head against his own broad shoulder, chafed his hands, and put some water to his lips, which Tonio carried from the spring that bubbled up from out the mossy ground beneath the fir trees. Soon he recovered, and was able to sit up in the dwarf's arms and look about him.

Then he remembered everything--where he was, what had happened--and his face grew white again.

"There, there, sonny, don't fret any more; and don't cry, either of you," added Bambo, gently laying one long, lean arm around Joan's shoulder. "If you do you'll make the master angry, and maybe he'll beat you. You needn't be afraid of Bruno; he's perfectly quiet, except when he's angered: besides, he's chained."

"Are you quite, quite sure?" asked Joan timidly, glancing nervously in the direction of the bear.

"Certain, positive!" answered Bambo, smiling into the eager faces raised so confidingly to his, while an odd, unaccustomed thrill stirred his pulse and warmed his heart. "If you look you'll see where the chain that's attached to his collar is fastened to the back of the caravan."

"And will the monkey bite us?" again asked the little one.

"Puck! Puck bite! Why no, bless your heart!" and this time the dwarf actually laughed. "Puck's about as old as Methuselah, and hasn't got a tooth in his head! He'll maybe pull your hair if he takes the notion, and that's the worst Puck 'll do to you.

"Hark! there's master calling," cried Bambo, shuffling to his feet as a roar resounded from the caravan like the growling of a lion near feeding-time. "Sit there, and I'll bring you some of my stew. It's made of pheasant and partridge, and very nice, I a.s.sure you."

"There, fellow, that'll do," shouted Joe, standing on the steps of the caravan; "you've palavered plenty over them brats. Leave them to howl theirselves to sleep if they like, but bring me my supper," he commanded angrily--for Mr. Harris was hungry, and somebody who knows about such things says that "a hungry man is an angry man"--then with a bang of the door and an ugly word he disappeared again. And as the dwarf dished up the supper he muttered to himself,--

"G.o.d help you, poor innocents! You have fallen into bad hands when you fell into the clutches of Moll Harris and Thieving Joe!"

He carried a plateful of dainty morsels out of his stew to where the children waited far back beyond the firelight and the limit of the bear's chain. He sat on the gra.s.s beside them, coaxing and scolding them by turns, until they forgot their fears and made a hearty supper, finished off by a draught of sparkling water from the spring.

Just at first the tiny man with the long arms, pale, sad face, and queer croaking voice had alarmed the little ones, because they had never seen any one the least like Bambo before. But when they discovered how gentle was the touch of those thin hands and bony arms, how kind and soothing the tones of that croaky voice, all their fears vanished. Darby determined that he would never again listen to unkind remarks about deformed persons, and Joan cuddled close beside her new friend in a most confiding fashion.

"Why has you taken no goody supper?" she asked him when all had finished, and the fire had sunk to a glow of red embers mixed with feathery flakes of ash. "Isn't you hungry? or did you take too big a tea?"

"Well, little one, I don't think I did. I'm just not hungry to-night.

Grown-up folks don't usually be so keen-set as youngsters, you know,"

replied Bambo, looking down into the blue eyes that scanned him so curiously.

"But _you_ isn't a grown-up," cried the child, in an amused tone.

"You're just 'bout as big as Darby, only with a queer man-face an'

grown-up arms. Does you call yourself a boy or a man?" she asked seriously, and without a hint of mockery. She merely desired information.

"Joan!" said Darby, in a distressed whisper, at the same time giving her a dig with his elbow, almost pushing her over.

Joan was going to make a fuss, when Bambo put in quickly, "Hush, missy!

you mustn't do that, or Moll will hear you. Let me try to answer your question, although I hardly know how. I'm only a boy in size, as you say--a small boy; yet in years I am a man, for I was four-and-twenty last May, the tenth of May," he added thoughtfully. "But I'm not a man as other men.--And you need not mind your sister saying that I'm not grown up," he continued, laying a thin hand on Darby's dark head, "for neither I am--leastways not like other folks.--I'm a dwarf, dearies--a poor, stunted bit of a thing like yon fir over yonder that has grown this way, that way, and every way except straight up and down like the rest of the trees about it. I'm Bambo the dwarf, Joe Harris's musical dwarf," and the little man laughed whimsically.

"Maybe I'll be different in the next world," he continued, after a moment's silence, which the children did not break, as they could think of nothing suitable to say, therefore tactfully held their peace. "I hope I shall, I _believe_ I shall," he added, with a far-away look in his eyes, as if he had become unconscious of his audience; "for has not the blessed Lord Himself said, 'Behold, I make all things new'?"

Here he was seized with a violent fit of coughing, which shook his poor frame sadly, and left him panting and spent.

"You's got a werry bad cold," said Joan, with a pretty air of concern.

"Can't you take some nashty medicine or sticky sweeties or cough drops to make you better?"

"Our nurse or our aunt always rubs us with stuff called 'lyptus, and sometimes puts a poultice on when we've got cold," Darby remarked. "I don't s'pose they'll have any 'lyptus in the caravan; but wouldn't you try the poultice?"

"Ay, sonny; only it wouldn't do me any good. I never was used with physic or poulticing; and I'll be better soon without anything,"

answered the dwarf, trying to stifle another fit of coughing lest it should distress the little ones. "I'll be quite well, in fact--before long, too," he added softly, with his shrunken face raised to the sky whence, with shining, sleepless eyes, the stars looked down upon the odd little group as if they were G.o.d's sentinels guarding the outposts where danger lurked.

"P'raps you shouldn't sit on the gra.s.s; it's usually damp at night,"

said Darby, in that quaint, old-world way of his which always attracted people greatly even when it most amused them. "Nurse doesn't allow us to sit on the gra.s.s when we're not well.--Sure she doesn't, Joan?"

"Never, never!" Joan affirmed solemnly, shaking her tangled golden head.

The dwarf got to his feet.

"Very well; I'll have to obey, I suppose," he said with a smile. "Now, I must find out where you two are to be put up for the night. It's high time you were under shelter. This sort of thing," he went on, waving his hand towards the open s.p.a.ce, the caravan, the dying fire, and the chained bear, "is not what you're used to; anybody with half an eye could see that--even Joe, although it suits his purpose to pretend he doesn't. To-morrow you'll tell me all about your home and your people, and how you wandered this way, and everything. Then we'll see what's to be done next," he added under his breath.

Moll carried the children off to the caravan, where Mr. Harris was already sleeping the sound sleep which is generally supposed to be the outcome of an easy conscience. She was about to bundle them, clothes and all, into a bed hastily spread upon what to Darby looked like a narrow shelf. He was too sleepy to offer any objections to the arrangement; but Joan stoutly resisted, declaring that she never went to bed without being undressed and saying her prayers.

"Boo-oo!" she wailed, putting her knuckles into her eyes. "I wants a nightgown, and I wants to say my p'ayers," she persisted.

"Shut up, will you!" ordered Moll, giving the little girl a rude shake.

She would have slapped her, only she dared not disturb her better half, for then the blows might have gone round. "I ha'n't got no nightgownd for ee," she went on, in an angry undertone; "but ee can take off yer frock an' wrap the shawl roun' ee." Which Joan proceeded to do, although she felt that nurse's old tartan shoulder-shawl was but a sorry subst.i.tute for a nightgown.

"Now I's goin' to say my p'ayers," she said, kneeling on the bare floor at this prayerless woman's knee, with closed eyes and piously-folded hands--a pathetic little figure in her comical attire. "You'll say the big words and join in the 'amen.' That's what nurse does. Is you ready?

Now--

"Gentle Jesus, meek'n mild, Look upon a ickle child, Pity my--'I can't say it!'-- Suffer me to come to Thee.

"Fain I would to Thee be brought; Dea'est Lord, forbid it not; In the kin'dom of Thy gwace Give a ickle Joan a place. Amen!"

After the "amen" Joan opened her big blue eyes and looked steadily at Moll without rising from her knees. The woman fidgeted on her seat, toyed with the amber beads on her neck, but she would not meet the pure gaze fixed upon her; for there was a tremulousness about her lips, a moisture in her eyes, a sense of ashamedness all over her which she did not wish the child to see.

But Joan _did_ see, and vaguely understood that here there was somewhat amiss, and forthwith proceeded to offer her sympathy after her own fashion, which, when all is said, is about the oldest and sweetest form that sympathy can take. Silently she got to her feet, climbed on Moll's lap, and laid a kiss--light as a snowflake, holy as a benediction, pregnant as a prayer--upon the woman's broad, sunburnt brow. Then she tumbled on to the shelf beside Darby, and soon both were wrapped in the deep, dreamless sleep of wearied childhood.

A few hours afterwards quite an air of stir and bustle pervaded the encampment. The crossbars for the support of pots and pans were taken down; scattered utensils were gathered up and stowed away; Bruno was driven into his cage under the body of the van; the wandering horses were caught, harnessed, and put in their places; and soon the Satellite Circus Company was on the move once more. For Joe and Moll had not failed to observe the dwarf's openly-evinced interest in their captives; and fearing that he might take it into his head to decamp during the night, carrying the children along with him, they quickly made up their minds to push on and put as many miles as the horses could cover between them and the possibility of escape, pursuit, or capture before daylight the next morning.

The little ones slept soundly side by side on their narrow shelf; the bear snarled uneasily behind his iron bars, with only an inch of plank between his hairy embrace and their soft young bodies; the monkey curled closer into the warmth of Tonio's black breast; the dwarf sat on his perch above the plodding piebalds, watching the stars and speculating about the pretty children--who they were, whence they came, and what would be their fate if left to the tender mercies of Thieving Joe and his bold wife Moll.

It was broad daylight when Darby and Joan awoke and sat up to look about them. For a few minutes they remembered nothing of what had occurred, and could not make out where they were. Oh yes, of course, Darby at length understood. They were in a caravan where they had sheltered all night, not very far from the foot of that hill over whose summit lay the entrance to the country which they had set out to seek.