in glass jars, and chains of little sugary
biscuits hanging on long red strings. There was the old-clothes' stall
with trousers and coats and waistcoats, all shabby and lanky, swinging
beneath the gas, and piles of clothes on the boards, all nondescript and
unhappy and faded; there was the stall with the farm implements, and the
medicine stall, and the flower stall, and the vegetable stall, and many,
many another. Each place had his or her guardian, vociferous, red-faced,
screaming out the wares, lowering the voice to cajole, raising it again
to draw back a retreating customer, carrying on suddenly an intimate
conversation with the next-door shopkeeper, laughing, quarrelling,
arguing.

To Jeremy it was a world of giant heights and depths. Behind the
stalls, beyond the lane down which he moved, was an uncertain glory,
a threatening peril. He fancied that strange animals moved there; he
thought he heard a lion roar and an elephant bellow. The din of the
sellers all about him made it impossible to tell what was happening
beyond there; only the lights and bells, shouts and cries, confusing
smells, and a great roar of distant voices.

He almost wished that he had not come, he felt so very small and
helpless; he wondered whether he could find his way out again, and
looking back, he was for a moment terrified to see that the stream of
people behind him shut him in so that he could not see the stile, nor
the wooden barrier, nor the red-faced man. Pushed forward, he found
himself at the end of the lane and standing in a semi-circular space
surrounded by strange-looking booths with painted pictures upon them,
and in front of them platforms with wooden steps running up to them.
Then, so unexpectedly that he gave a little scream, a sudden roar burst
out behind him. He turned and, indeed, the world seemed to have gone
mad. A moment ago there had been darkness and dim shadow. Now, suddenly,
there was a huge whistling, tossing circle of light and flame, and from
the centre of this a banging, brazen, cymbal-clashing scream issued-a
scream that, through its strident shrillness, he recognised as a tune
that he knew--a tune often whistled by Jim at Cow Farm. "And her golden
hair was hanging down her back." Whence the tune came he could not
tell; from the very belly of the flaming monster, it seemed; but, as he
watched, he saw that the huge circle whirled ever faster and faster,
and that up and down on the flame of it coloured horses ros