own to the front door without seeming to
touch his feet to anything, and when he got out on the front steps he saw
the circus magician coming along. By that time the music had stopped and
Pony could not see any procession. The magician had on a tall, peaked hat,
like a witch. He took up the whole street, he was so wide in the black
glazed gown that hung from his arms when he stretched them out, for he
seemed to be groping along that way, with his wand in one hand, like a
blind man.

He kept saying in a kind of deep, shaking voice: "It's all glory; it's all
glory," and the sound of those words froze Pony's blood. He tried to get
back into the house again, so that the magician should not find him, but
when he felt for the door-knob there was no door there anywhere; nothing
but a smooth wall. Then he sat down on the steps and tried to shrink up so
little that the magician would miss him; but he saw his wide goggles
getting nearer and nearer; and then his father and the doctor were
standing by him looking down at him, and the doctor said:

"He has been walking in his sleep; he must be bled," and he got out his
lancet, when Pony heard his mother calling: "Pony, Pony! What's the
matter? Have you got the nightmare?" and he woke up, and found it was just
morning.

The sun was shining in at his window, and it made him so glad to think
that by this time the circus was far away and he was not with it, that he
hardly knew what to do.

He was not very well for two or three days afterwards, and his mother let
him stay out of school to see whether he was really going to be sick or
not. When he went back most of the fellows had forgotten that he had been
going to run off with the circus. Some of them that happened to think of
it plagued him a little and asked how he liked being a circus actor.

Hen Billard was the worst; he said he reckoned the circus magician got
scared when he saw what a whaler Pony was, and told the circus men that
they would have to get a new tent to hold him; and that was the reason
why they didn't take him. Archy Hawkins said: "How long did you have to
wait on the front steps, Pony, dear?" But after that he was pretty good to
him, and said he reckoned they had better not any of them pretend that
Pony had not tried to run off if they had not been up to see.

Pony himself could never be exactly sure whether he had waited on the
front steps and seen the circus magician or not. Sometimes it seemed all
of it lik