-cake, fresh from the oven, he thought himself
blessed.

Grandfather Iden had long since ceased any serious business, but he
still made a few of these renowned cakes for his amusement, and sold a
good few at times to the carters' lads who came in to market.

Amaryllis knew the path perfectly, but if she had not, the tom-tomming
of drums and blowing of brass, audible two miles away, would have guided
her safely to the fair. The noise became prodigious as she
approached--the ceaseless tomtom, the beating of drums and gongs outside
the show vans, the shouting of the showmen, the roar of a great crowd,
the booing of cattle, the baaing of sheep, the neighing of
horses--altogether the "rucket" was tremendous.

She looked back from the hill close to the town and saw the people
hurrying in from every quarter--there was a string of them following the
path she had come, and others getting over distant stiles. A shower had
fallen in the night, but the ceaseless wheels had ground up the dust
again, and the lines of the various roads were distinctly marked by the
clouds hanging above them. For one on business, fifty hastened on to
join the uproar.

Suppose the Venus de Medici had been fetched from Florence and had been
set up in the town of Woolhorton, or the Laocoon from Rome, or the Milo
from Paris, do you think all these people would have scurried in such
haste to admire these beautiful works? Nothing of the sort; if you want
a crowd you must make a row. It is really wonderful how people do
thoroughly and unaffectedly enjoy a fearful disturbance; if the cannon
could be shot off quietly, and guns made no noise, battles would not be
half so popular to read about. The silent arrow is uninteresting, and if
you describe a mediaeval scramble you must put in plenty of splintering
lances, resounding armour, shrieks and groans, and so render it lively.

"This is the patent age of new inventions," and some one might make a
profit by starting a fete announcing that a drum or a gong would be
provided for every individual, to be beaten in a grand universal chorus.

Amaryllis had no little difficulty in getting through the crowd till she
found her way behind the booths and slipped along the narrow passage
between them and the houses. There was an arched entrance,
archaeologically interesting, by which she paused a moment, half inclined
to go up and inquire for her boots. The shoemaker who lived there had
had them since Christmas, and all