the cask wherein he lay uplifted and set upright against the wall.
He was a prisoner, but as yet undiscovered. Being satisfied in his mind
that hanging was the systematic and legalized penalty for the outrage he
had committed, he kept down manfully the cry that rose to his lips.

In a few moments he felt the cask again lifted by a powerful hand, which
appeared above him at the edge of his prison, and which he concluded
belonged to the ferocious giant Blunderbore, whose features and limbs he
had frequently met in colored pictures. Before he could recover from
his astonishment, his cask was placed with several others on a cart, and
rapidly driven away. The ride which ensued he describes as being fearful
in the extreme. Rolled around like a pill in a box, the agonies which
he suffered may be hinted at, not spoken. Evidences of that protracted
struggle were visible in his garments, which were of the consistency of
syrup, and his hair, which for several hours, under the treatment of hot
water, yielded a thin treacle. At length the cart stopped on one of the
wharves, and the cartman began to unload. As he tilted over the cask in
which Charles lay, an exclamation broke from his lips, and the edge of
the cask fell from his hands, sliding its late occupant upon the wharf.
To regain his short legs, and to put the greatest possible distance
between himself and the cartman, were his first movements on regaining
his liberty. He did not stop until he reached the corner of Front
Street.

Another blank succeeds in this veracious history. He cannot remember
how or when he found himself in front of the circus tent. He has an
indistinct recollection of having passed through a long street of stores
which were all closed, and which made him fear that it was Sunday, and
that he had spent a miserable night in the sugar cask. But he remembers
hearing the sound of music within the tent, and of creeping on his hands
and knees, when no one was looking, until he passed under the canvas.
His description of the wonders contained within that circle; of the
terrific feats which were performed by a man on a pole, since practised
by him in the back yard; of the horses, one of which was spotted
and resembled an animal in his Noah's Ark, hitherto unrecognized and
undefined; of the female equestrians, whose dresses could only be
equalled in magnificence by the frocks of his sister's doll; of the
painted clown, whose jokes excited a merriment, somewhat tin