'All right! If so be as she says so, it's got to be, I reckon!' he growled; and Ned swung himself up behind, trying hard to make out, as the procession moved off slowly and ponderously at last, what sort of beasts were on the other side of the boards he was leaning against. Suppose they were lions, or suppose the boards got loose? The fisher-lad, whom storm and tempest on the deep could not dismay, felt a bit creepy. Setting his ear close to the wood, he could distinctly hear hideous growls, as if some savage creature, maddened by hunger, were ready to break out and leap upon him. What would granny say if she could dream of his situation? But dashing his hand across his sleepy eyes, Ned hastily told himself there must be no harking back, no thinking of what granny or anybody else at Northbourne would say or do. It must be good-bye, for ever, to the old life. The motion of the van, the rest after the long tramp, alike caused the country-bred boy to nod sleepily as he clung to his perch. Presently, he was back again in Northbourne. It was Sunday afternoon, and, dressed in his best, the fisher-boy stood up straight in class to repeat his hymn to his earnest-eyed, sweet-faced teacher, 'Miss Theedory.' And the words he fought sleepily to remember must have been born of his nearness to the growling monsters within the caravan-- 'Christian, dost thou see them On the holy ground, How the troops of Midian Prowl and prowl around?' CHAPTER XVII IN THE MIRE It was still darkish as the array of vans filed along the London road, and, in the confusion, Ned lost sight of the van in which Alick had got a lift beside the lady in curl-papers. And no wonder! for the fact was, the show had parted in two divisions--one going to be stationed in the East End, somewhere about Whitechapel, the other portion to traverse the suburbs south of the Thames. It thus happened that the two Northbourne boys were separated, as they each discovered when the day wore on. Worse still: they found, to their dismay, that they had been entrapped artfully. A couple of useful boys were desperately needed, as a fever had been hanging about the show, breaking out at fitful intervals, and the chief victims had been the boy-helpers, who, one after another, dropped off, some to hospitals, others to die, like rats in the holes that were all the homes they knew. The welcome accorded to Alick and Ned was thus explained. The showwoman was secretly overjoyed to give the strangers a lift on their journey. But before the first day closed in the pair of adventurers found out what real hard work meant. Even Ned Dempster, accustomed to the dilatory, easy-going life of sea-fishing, knew nothing indeed of the drudgery and hustling and flurry of such everyday work as he had stepped into, unawares, among the rough caravan folk.