With his eyes as remote and sad and patient as if he had not heard or understood a word of the constable’s insult, Jan obeyed, rolling his trousers to the knees. When the Doubting Thomas representative of the law had pinched the pale, putty-colored flesh of Jan’s pitifully thin calves and found them to be flesh-and-blood indeed, he passed on, red of face, furious at the snorts of laughter which filled the tent. “What if he takes a notion to wash my face?” Sally shivered, bending low, in an attitude of mystic concentration, over the crystal which she was pretending to read for a farmer’s wife who had no interest in Boffo, the human ostrich, but who did have perfect faith in the powers of “Princess Lalla.” “What if he is just pretending to be interested in the other freaks and is really looking for me? Has Nita dared to tip him off that Sally Ford is here?” But her little sing-song voice droned on, predicting prosperity and happiness and “a journey by land and sea” for the credulous farmer’s wife. “What’s your real name, sister?” the constable demanded loudly, officiously, stamping up the steps that led to the little platform. “Please,” Sally pleaded prettily, making her eyes wide and cloudy with mystic visions, “do not een-terr-upt! The veesion she will go away!” “You let her alone, Sam Pelton!” the farmer’s wife commanded tartly. “Go on, Princess Lalla. I think you’re just wonderful—knowing about my mother being dead and even her name and all.” And Sally continued the reading with Constable Pelton breathing audibly upon her neck as she bent her small head gravely over the crystal. When she could think of nothing else to tell the highly pleased woman, she was desperate. It seemed to her that everyone in the tent was looking at her, reading panic in her trembling fingers, in her fluttering eyelids. “Gimme a knockdown to my past, present and future, Sister,” the constable suggested with heavy sarcasm and jocularity. “Reckon an officer of the law don’t have to pay. And you’d better make it a good one, or I’ll run you in for obtaining money under false pretenses. Come on, now! Miz Holtzman has already give you a good tip-off, and I guess my star speaks for itself. Knowing my name and my business, you oughta be able to fake a pretty good line for me, but if you don’t tell me my wife’s name, how many kids I got, where I come from, and anything else I’m a-mind to ask you, I’ll make you a present of free board and lodging at the county’s expense.” Unknown to Sally, whose eyes were fixed, blind with fear, upon the crystal tightly cupped in her ice-cold palms, Gus, the barker, had drawn near enough to hear the constable’s threats and demands.