t the feather-weight of the hot
hand on his mane, the touch of the little feet somewhere near his
neck. There was a magnetic current of sympathy between the horse and
the child.

"Think you's a giant," she said once to Orion, as she shot past him in
the race.

The crowd, speechless with astonishment and delight for the first
moment or two, now began to clap and cheer loudly. Crack went Uncle
Ben's whip. The circus girls in the wings, the men, the clown, all
watched the little pair with beating hearts. Diana they felt sure of,
but what of little Orion? And yet a change had come over the child.
His face was no longer pale; some of Diana's spirit seemed to have
entered into his soul.

The signal came for the pair to stand upon the bare, backs of their
horses. Little Orion scrambled as quickly and nimbly to his feet as
Diana herself. He caught the reins; crack again went the whip; the
horses flew round and round. Now and then Diana said a soft word to
Greased Lightning; now and then she stamped her small foot on Pole
Star's neck. Each movement, each glance of the child, seemed to thrill
through the willing beast. Incomprehensible as it may seem, both these
wild, half-tamed creatures loved her. They kept straight, veering
neither to left nor right, for her sake.

The first part of the performance went safely through, but now came
the more difficult and dangerous time. The children were now not only
to ride the horses standing, but they were obliged to ride holding one
foot in the air, then to keep on their steeds standing on tiptoe, and
finally they had to spring through great rings made of tissue paper,
and leap again upon the horses as they galloped through. Diana
performed her task with unfailing exactness, always reaching the
horse's back at the right moment, springing up, sitting down, standing
first on one foot, then on the other, being apparently on wires,
afraid of nothing, triumphant through all. Orion made a gallant effort
to follow her example. In two minutes now the whole thing would be
over.

"Don't be fwightened, Orion; time's nearly up," whispered the gay,
brave little voice in his ear.

The horses flew, the children moved as if they were puppets, and all
might now have been well if at that moment Diana herself--Diana the
fearless, the brave, the unconquerable--had not slipped, slipped at
the very moment when she was springing through one of the rings. The
horse galloped on without her, and she lay pr