other night?"

He knew she meant boxing his ears, when he was not to blame, and he
said: "Oh no," and then he threw his arms round her neck and cried; and
she told him not to cry, and that she would never do such a thing again;
but she was really so frightened she did not know what she was doing.

When he quieted down, she said: "Now say your prayers, Pony, 'Our
Father,'" and she said, "Our Father" all through with him, and after
that, "Now I lay me," just as when he was a very little fellow. After
they had finished she stooped over and kissed him again, and when he
turned his face into his pillow she kept smoothing his hair with her
hand for about a minute. Then she went away.

Pony could hear them stirring about for a good while down-stairs. His
father came in from uptown at last, and asked: "Has Pony come in?"

And his mother said; "Yes, he's up in bed. I wouldn't disturb him,
Henry. He's asleep by this time."

His father said: "I don't know what to make of the boy. If he keeps on
acting so strangely I shall have the doctor see him in the morning."

Pony felt dreadfully to think how far away from them he should be in the
morning, and he would have given anything if he could have gone down to
his father and mother and told them what he was going to do. But it did
not seem as if he could.

By-and-by he began to be sleepy, and then he dozed off, but he thought
it was hardly a minute before he heard the circus band, and knew that
the procession was coming for him. He jumped out of bed and put on his
things as fast as he could; but his roundabout had only one sleeve to
it, somehow, and he had to button the lower buttons of his trousers to
keep it on. He got his bundle and stole down 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 wa