“You see,” she smiled at him dazzlingly, “another advantage of my upset is that the buggy is so smashed that you cannot decently refuse to drive me home.” “But Mary,” he protested, “I explained fully to you.” “You didn’t really expect me to believe all that fol-de-rol?” she cried. “Suppose I did, I don’t see any dwergs around, and if all Malebolge were in plain sight I’d make you take me anyhow.” Inevitably he did, but that afternoon their daily ceremony of hand-wave from the portico and hat-wave from horseback was resumed and was continued as their sole intercourse. VI It was full midsummer when a circus came to Brexington. Case and I started for a ride together on the afternoon of its arrival, passed the tents already raised and met the procession on its way through town from the freight yard of the railroad. We pulled our horses to one side of the street and sat watching the show. There were Cossacks and cowboys, Mexican vaqueros and Indians on mustangs. There were two elephants, a giraffe, and then some camels which set our mounts snorting and swerving about. Then came the cages, one of monkeys, another of parrots, cockatoos and macaws, others with wolves, bears, hyenas, a lion, a lioness, a tiger, and a beautiful leopard. Case made a movement and I heard a click. I looked round and beheld him with his revolver cocked and pointed at the leopard’s cage. He did not fire but kept the pistol aimed at the cage until it was out of range. Then he thrust it back into its holster and watched the fag-end of the procession go by. All he said was: “You will have to excuse me, Radford, I have urgent business at home.” Towards dusk Cato came to me in great agitation. “Mahs’r Cash done gone off’n he haid,” he declared. “He shuah done loss he sainsus.” I told him to return home and I would stroll up there casually. I found Case in the wood-shed, uncle Rastus with him. Hung by the hind legs like new-slaughtered hogs were a dozen of the biggest dogs of which Rastus had had charge. Their throats were cut and each dripped into a tin pail. Rastus, his ebony face paled to a sort of mud-gray, held a large tin pail and a new white-washer’s brush. Case greeted me as usual, as if my presence there were a matter of course and he were engaged upon nothing out of the common. “Uncle,” he said, “I judge those are about dripped out. Pour it all into the big pail.” He took the brush from Rastus, who followed him to the gate. There Case dipped the brush into the blood and painted a broad band across the gravel of the drive and the flagstones of the footpath. He proceeded as if he were using lime white-wash to mark off a lawn-tennis court in the early days of the game, when wet markers were not yet invented and dry markers were still undreamed of. He continued the stripe of blood all round his place, just inside the hedge. He made it about three inches wide and took great pains to make it plain and heavy.