Even his progress through the town seemed wonderful, quite unattended at last, as he had always all his life longed to be. So soon as he left Orange Street and entered the market he was caught into a great crowd. It was all stirring and humming with a noise such as the bonfire had all day been making. It was his first introduction to the world--he had never been in a large crowd before--and it is not to be denied but that his heart beat thick and his knees trembled a little. But he pulled himself together. Who was he to be afraid? But the books under his arm were a nuisance. He suddenly dropped them in amongst the legs and boots of the people. There were many interesting sights to be seen in the market-place, but he could not stay, and he found himself soon, to his own surprise, slipping through the people as quietly and easily as though he had done it all his days, only always he kept his hand on his money lest that should be stolen and his adventure suddenly come to nothing. He knew his way very well, and soon he was at the end of Finch Street which in those days opened straight into fields and hedges. Even now, so little has Polchester grown in thirty years, the fields and hedges are not very far away. Here there was a stile with a large wooden fence on either side of it, and a red-faced man saying: “Pay your sixpences now! Come along... pay your sixpences now.” Crowds of people were passing through the stile, jostling one another, pressing and pushing, but all apparently in good temper, for there was a great deal of laughter and merriment. From the other side of the fence came a torrent of sound, so discordant and so tumultuous that it was impossible to separate the elements of it one from another--screams, shrieks, the bellowing of animals, and the monotonous rise and fall of scraps of tune, several bars of one and then bars of another, and then everything lost together in the general babel; and to the right of him Jeremy could see not very far away quiet fields with cows grazing, and the dark grave wood on the horizon. Would he venture? For a moment his heart failed him--a wave of something threatening and terribly powerful seemed to come out to him through the stile, and the people who were passing in looked large and fierce. Then he saw two small boys, their whole bearing one of audacious boldness, push through. He was not going to be beaten. He followed a man with a back like a wall. “One, please,” he said. “'Come along now... pay your sixpences... pay your sixpences,” cried the man. He was through. He stepped at once into something that had for him all the elements of the most terrifying and enchanting of fairy tales. He was planted, it seemed, in a giant world. At first he could see nothing but the high and thick bodies of the people who moved on every side of him; he peered under shoulders, he was lost amongst legs and arms, he walked suddenly into waistcoat buttons and was flung thence on to walking sticks.