A group of dancing-girls showed on the flat plinth of the shrine; musicians strummed here and there; here and there a conjurer essayed tricks. But all this was trivial beside the toys. Yet they were still more trivial: one for a farthing, two for a farthing, even three for a farthing if you chose mud monkeys, or brass rings made out of sliced cartridge-cases set with drops of blue or red sealing-wax. 'Lo!' came the voices of peasants in for the show. 'See to that! That is new!' And some grave-faced husbandman would buy a sort of Mercury's _caduceus_ made of bamboo, with two writhing, twisting snakes to it, fearfully, horribly alive. This piece of ingenuity, indeed, ran a couple of cotton-wool bears who chased each other endlessly over a loop of bamboo, close for the pride of first place in the fair; a place for which there was keen competition. So that, whenever any toy seemed to hit the fancy, there were instantly trays of it being hawked about above the crush, above the soft light, with the cry--'The best in the fair, one farthing! one farthing for the best in the fair!' Chris, caught in the crowd, drifted on with it, wondering, as he had wondered as a child, which of the many claimants up aloft in the semi-darkness was the true one. It was a strangely absorbing wonder; but then the whole scene was absorbingly unlike anything else in the world. It was humanity herded by toys, limited by them, forced to go one way, and one way only, by them! The rows of little flickering lamps between the two seemed as if they were shaking with silent laughter at the sight. 'The best in the fair! one farthing! One farthing for the best in the fair!' The cry came this time with something that was hardly a toy, and yet hands were stretched out to buy it. Chris, tall enough to see over the heads of his neighbours, noticed that more trays, full of this something, were being hawked on all sides. It was only a hank of the coarse ring-streaked cotton thread used in betrothals as an amulet for the bridegroom's wrist, and for plaiting into the bride's hair. Attached to it was a thin brass medal, apparently cut out of a cartridge case, and shaped like the talisman a second wife wears as a safeguard against the machinations of the first. It was stamped, Chris found on buying one, with what seemed, at first, a crescent and a cross; but a closer look showed him that the latter was a _swastika_, or death-mark. In other words, the equal-limbed cross with bent ends. Below that again was a sort of Broad Arrow. 'The best in the fair! Safety for females! Victoria Queen's mercifulness! Freedom from tyrannies for one farthing!'