ont of the
Mayoralty, a tall stuccoed building where the public balls were
given, and the judges had their lodgings in assize time, and the
Colonel his quarters during the militia training.

Fine shows passed under Taffy's window. Twice a year came the
judges, with the sheriff in uniform and his chaplain, and his coach,
and his coachman and lackeys in powder and plush and silk stockings,
white or flesh-coloured; and the barristers with their wigs, and the
javelin men and silver trumpets. Every spring, too, the Royal
Rangers Militia came up for training. Suddenly one morning, in the
height of the bird-nesting season, the street would swarm with
countrymen tramping up to the barracks on the hill, and back, with
bundles of clothes and unblackened boots dangling. For the next six
weeks the town would be full of bugle calls, and brazen music, and
companies marching and parading in suits of invisible green, and
clanking officers in black, with little round forage caps, and silver
badges on their side-belts; and, towards evening, with men lounging
and smoking, or washing themselves in public before the doors of
their billets.

Usually too, Whitsun Fair fell at the height of the militia training;
and then for two days booths and caravans, sweet-standings and
shooting-galleries lined the main street, and Taffy went out with a
shilling in his pocket to enjoy himself. But the bigger shows--the
menagerie, the marionettes, and the travelling Theatre Royal--were
pitched on Mount Folly, just under his window. Sometimes the theatre
would stay a week or two after the fair was over, until even the boy
grew tired of the naphtha-lamps and the voices of the tragedians, and
the cornet wheezing under canvas, and began to long for the time when
they would leave the square open for the boys to come and play at
prisoners' bars in the dusk.

One evening, a fortnight before Whitsun Fair, he had taken his book
to the open window, and sat there with it. Every night he had to
learn a text which he repeated next morning to his mother. Already,
across the square, the Mayoralty house was brightly lit, and the
bandsmen had begun to arrange their stands and music before it; for
the Colonel was receiving company. Every now and then a carriage
arrived, and set down its guests.

After a while Taffy looked up and saw two persons crossing the
square--an old man and a little girl. He recognised them, having
seen them together in church the day b