erratic individuality, might be at the other end of the world by breakfast-time. He crept back to his own car, found it unharmed in the deep shadow where he had left it, and mounted. By this time the elephant herd had accomplished a good quarter of a mile down the gradual declivity of the embankment. ‘Craig’s girl’ started her car and followed gently. It seemed, in the profound silence of the night, that the spit, spit of her engine must be heard for miles and miles around. Richard started his own car, and rolled noiselessly in the traces of his forerunner. The surface of the road was perfect--for the Bedfordshire County Council takes a proper pride in its share of this national thoroughfare--and the vehicles moved with admirable ease, Richard’s being about a couple of hundred yards in the rear. Just at the top of the embankment is a tiny village, appropriately called Chalk Hill, and this village possesses a post pillar-box, a Wesleyan chapel of the size of a cottage, and an inn--the Green Man. As Richard swung past the Green Man a head popped out of one of its windows. ‘Anything wrong?’ asked a man. ‘No,’ said Richard, stopping his car and lowering his voice to a whisper, lest the girl in front should hear and turn round. ‘Go back to bed,’ he added. ‘Go to bed yourself,’ the man said, apparently angry at this injunction. ‘You circus-folk, you’ve got motor-cars now; as if camels and alligators wasn’t enough, you’ve got motorcars a-grunting and a-rattling. Three blessed hours you’ve been a-passing this house, and my wife down with erysipelas.’ Grumbling, the man closed the window. Richard laughed at being identified with the retinue of Bosco’s circus. He felt that it was an honour, for in the eyes of the village these circus-folk move always in an atmosphere of glory and splendour and freedom.