"I reckon I cud, for fäather äun't going this year, he's got an auction at Appledore." "Then you come along; I'll take you, and we'll have some fun." "But I döan't want you to waste your money." "It won't be wasting it. Why, Lord love ye, I'd rather spend it on you than anything in the world." Her look of surprise and adoration was his reward. § 7. Boarzell Fair was in many ways a mark of the passage of the years and a commentary on history. Not only did the atmosphere and persons of it change very much as the nineteenth century changed, but the side-shows were so many lights cast on popular opinion, politics, and progress. For instance, in the year 1878, the Panorama which had started with the Battle of Trafalgar and the Royal Gardens of Vauxhall, now gave thrilling if belated episodes of the Siege of Paris, and a gorgeous picture of the Queen being declared Empress of India at Delhi. The merry-go round not only went by steam, but was accompanied by a steam organ playing "The Swell Commercial" and "Married to a Mermaid" unfalteringly from noon till night. In the shooting gallery men potted Mr. Gladstone, Mr. Dillon, and Charles Peace, instead of the Russian Czar or Nana Sahib of their youth, or the hated Boney of their fathers. It all moved with the times, and yet remained four or five years behind them. One came in contact with movements which had just ebbed from the country, waves that had rolled back everywhere except in these lonely rural districts where interests and hatreds came later and lingered longer than in more accessible parts. The population had altered too. Old Gideon Teazel had died some years ago, and his son Jasper was boss in his place. He was unlike his father both in character and physique, an undersized little ruffian, seasoned by a long career in horse-stealing, who beat his wife openly on the caravan steps, and boasted that he had landed more flats at thimble-rig than any thimble-engro in England. He would have cheated the shirt off any man at the Show, and established a sort of ascendancy through sheer dread of his cunning. The only man who did not fear him was Mexico Bill, a half-breed in charge of the cocoanut shie. Mexico Bill feared only the man who could knock him out, and that man had not yet been found in Boarzell Fair. As a matter of fact he was usually pretty genial and docile, but he had been wounded in the head by Indians long ago, and sometimes went mad and ran amok. On these occasions the only thing to do was to trip him up, and enrol as many volunteers as possible to sit on him till he came to his senses.