ever speak to a girl like that!"

Ricks, jubilant over the success of the evening, decided to follow the
circus, which was to be in the next town on the following day.

"It ain't fur," he said. "We kin push on to-night and be ready to open
early in the morning."

Sandy, miserable in body and spirit, mechanically obeyed instructions.
His head was getting queerer all the time, and he could not remember
whether it was day or night. About a mile from Clayton he sank down by
the road.

"Say, Ricks," he said abruptly; "I'm after quittin' peddlin'."

"What you goin' to do?"

"I'm goin' to school."

If Sandy had announced his intention of putting on baby clothes and
being wheeled in a perambulator, Ricks could not have been more
astonished.

"What?" he asked in genuine doubt.

"'Cause I want to be the right sort," burst out Sandy, passionately.
"This ain't the way you get to be the right sort."

Ricks surveyed him contemptuously. "Look-a here, are you comin' along
of me or not?"

"I can't," said Sandy, weakly.

Ricks shifted his pack, and with never a parting word or a backward
look he left his business partner of three months lying by the
roadside, and tramped away in the darkness.

Sandy started up to follow him; he tried to call, but he had no
strength. He lay with his face on the road and talked. He knew there
was nobody to listen, but still he kept on, softly talking about
microscopes and pink soap, crying out again and again that he
couldn't ever speak to a girl like that.

After a long while somebody came. At first he thought he must have
gone back to the land behind the peat-flames, for it was a great black
witch who bent over him, and he instinctively felt about in the grass
for the tender, soft hand which he used to press against his cheek. He
found instead the hand of the witch herself, and he drew back in
terror.

"Fer de Lawd sake, honey, what's de matter wif you?" asked a kindly
voice. Sandy opened his eyes. A tall old negro woman bent over him,
her head tied up in a turban, and a shawl about her shoulders.

"Did you git runned over?" she asked, peering down at him anxiously.

Sandy tried to explain, but it was all the old mixture of soap and
microscopes and never being able to speak to her. He knew he was
talking at random, but he could not say the things he thought.

"Where'd you come from, boy?"

"Curragh Chase, Limerick," murmured Sandy.

"'Fore de Lawd, he's done been cunjered!" c