Five minutes later, one walking the highway leading up from Benton might have beheld a strange figure, striding in to the city, breathing words of wrath upon the night air; a figure clad in Indian finery, but bearing the likeness beneath his war-paint of Daniel O'Reilly, a stalwart labourer of Benton, for the time being a valuable accession to the Bagley & Blondin great moral and scientific show. CHAPTER VII A LONG RACE BEGUN The circus remained two days longer in Benton, but there were certain youths who kept away from it. A solemn oath of secrecy bound them as to the reason why. Only Tim Reardon and Joe Warren couldn't resist the temptation of stealing in among the wagons and watching for the appearance of Danny O'Reilly in all the glory of his paint and feathers; and, when they beheld a crowd of farmers gaze upon him admiringly as he passed in for the Wild West performance, they nearly choked to death with laughter, and couldn't have run if he had espied them. "Guess we won't get licked, after all," whispered Little Tim. "Not if we keep dark, we won't. Danny's going on with the show up the state. He told Jimmy Nolan, his cousin, and Jimmy told me. 'You'd never guessed he wasn't an Injun,' says Jimmy to me, 'unless I'd told yer. Don't you ever let on,' he says--and I like to died--hello, who's that coming?" Looking in the direction pointed out by Tim Reardon, Young Joe beheld an old wagon, drawn by a lean horse, the seat of the wagon nearly bent down to the axles on one side by the weight of the occupant. "Well, if it isn't Colonel Witham!" exclaimed Young Joe. "Didn't suppose he'd pay to go to a circus." It seemed, however, that Colonel Witham had no immediate intention of entering the main tent, for he proceeded to walk along the line of smaller pavilions, where the side-shows proclaimed their many and monstrous attractions. The canvas of one of these presently attracted the colonel's attention, for he paused in front of it and stood studying it contemplatively. Little Tim and Young Joe, stealing around in the rear of Colonel Witham, beheld the object of his curiosity. There was a full length portrait on the canvas, painted in brilliant colours, of a woman standing before an urn from which vague vapours were arising. She held in one hand a wand, with which she seemed in the act of conjuring forth a shadowy figure from within the vapours. A little black satanic imp peered coyly over her right shoulder. The inscription beneath her portrait read: Lorelei, the Sorceress. Your Future Foretold--All Mysteries Explained--Your Fate Read by the Stars--Hidden Things Revealed--Lost Property Recovered.