A stifling evening had succeeded a burning day. Here on the bluff a breeze moved cool and soft as it had been waftings from the dusky cloak night dropped about them; below was heat and crowded life and clamour, rising in the waving reek of the naphtha flares; in shouts of the showmen; in shrill laughter from village girls at fun about the booths, or horseplay with their swains; in ceaseless rifle-cracks from the shooting-galleries--in drum-thumpings, in steam organs, in brazen instruments; occasionally, high above it all, in enormous _oo-oo-oomphs_ from the caged lions in the huge marquee that housed Boss Maddox's Royal Circus and Monster Forest-bred Menagerie--a tremendous sound, as Percival thought when it came booming across the clamour, that was a brute's but that seemed, like some trump of protest against the din, to make brutish the human cries and shouts it governed. Two crowds, leaving and entering, jostled one another at the entrance to the Royal Circus and Forest-bred Menagerie; stretching on either hand from where they pressed ran the minor shows under Boss Maddox's proprietorship, forming a noisy, flaring street that ended, facing the circus marquee, with "Foxy" Pinsent's Academy of Boxing and School of Arms. Maddox's Royal Circus and Forest Bred Menagerie at one end, Pinsent's fine booth at the other--between them Maddox's Living Pictures, Maddox's Wild-West Shooting Gallery, Maddox's Steam Switch-back and Aerial Railway, Maddox's Original Marionettes, Maddox's Premier Boatswings, Maddox's Monster Panorama, Maddox's Royal Theatre and Concert Divan, Maddox's Elite Refreshment Saloons, Maddox's American Freak Museum, and all Maddox's smaller fry--coker-nut shies, hoop-las, Living Mermaid, Hall of Strength, Cave of Mystery, Magic Mirrors, and the rest of them; owned by Boss Maddox, financed by Boss Maddox, or, if of independent ownership, having the Boss's favour and acknowledging the Boss's ownership. No booths whose proprietors called Stingo Boss were open: and that was one step in the tricks and chances of the day. The gaunt figure of Boss Maddox, watchful and urgent this night for the very reason that the Stingo booths were closed, passed now along the further side of lights towards Foxy Pinsent's pitch. Head bent towards his left shoulder; hands clasped behind his back; uncommonly tall; uncommonly spare--that was Boss Maddox anywhere.