"You's right there," agreed Cump. "Twouldn't never do, neither, fur you to slip off an' mebbe git yo'se'f crippled up. Whar would this yere pertracted meetin' be then? Lemme think. Ah, hah! I got it--the notion jes' come to me. Purfessor, listen yere." He placed his lips close to the other's ear and spoke perhaps fifty words in a confidential whisper. In token of approval and acquiescence the Professor warmly clasped the right hand of this forethoughted Glass. After such a manner was Cephus Fringe, all unwittingly, thrust into the pit which had been digged for him. At the point where the narrative was broken into for the interpolation of the episode now set forth, the head of the parade, as will be remembered, was just coming abreast of the old show-grounds. Now, the head of the parade was Cephus Fringe, and none other. One glance at him, upon a white steed, all glorious in high hat and frock coat and with that wide crimson sash dividing his torso in two parts, would have proved that to the most ignorant. As for his palfrey, she ambled along as though Eighth of August celebrations and a saxophone blaring between her drooping ears, and jubilating crowds and all that singing behind her, and all these carnival barkers shouting alongside her, had been her daily portion since first she was foaled into the world. The compound word lady-like would be the word fittest to describe her. Not twenty feet from her, close up to where the abutting common met the straggling brick pavement, stood the battered Flyin' Jinny of Gumbo Rollins. It was nearermost to the street-line of all the attractions provided by AEsop Loving and his associates. Here, on the site which he had chosen, was Gumbo Rollins himself, competently in charge. At the precise moment when Mittie May and her proud rider had reached a point just opposite him, Gumbo Rollins elected to set his device in motion and with it the steam-organ which was part and parcel of the thing's organism. Really he might have waited a bit. Lured by the prospect of beholding something for nothing, most of his consistent patrons temporarily had deserted him to flock out into the roadway and witness the passing by of the Sin Killer's cohorts. Two infatuated lovers, country darkies, sat with arms entwined in a rickety wooden chariot. Here and there a piccaninny clung to the back of a spotted wooden pony or a striped wooden zebra. These, for the moment, were his only customers; nevertheless Gumbo Jones Rollins swung a lever and started the machinery. The merry-go-round moved with a shriek of steam; the wheezy organ began spouting forth the introductory bars of a rollicking _galop_, a tune so old that its very name had been forgotten, although the air of it lived anonymously.