"Ricks," said Sandy, lowering his voice unsteadily, "is this Kentucky?"
"Yep; we crossed the line to-day."
"I can't talk no more," said Sandy. "You'll have to be doin' it. I'm sick."
It was not only the fever that was burning in his veins, and making him bury his hot head in his hands and wish he had never been born. It was shame and humiliation, and all because of the look on the face of the girl at the edge of the crowd. He sat in the shadow of the big box and fought his fight. The coffee and the excitement no longer kept him up; he was faint, and his breath came short. Above him he heard Ricks's rasping voice still talking to the few customers who were left. He knew, without glancing up, just how Ricks looked when he said the words; he knew
how his teeth pushed his lips back, and how his restless little eyes watched everything at once. A sudden fierce repulsion swept over him for peddling, for Ricks, for himself.
"And to think," he whispered, with a sob in his throat, "that I can't ever speak to a girl like that!"
Ricks, jubilant over the success of the evening, decided to follow the circus, which was to be in the next town on the following day.
"It ain't fur," he said. "We kin push on to-night and be ready to open early in the morning."
Sandy, miserable in body and spirit, mechanically obeyed instructions. His head was getting queerer all the time, and he could not remember whether it was day or night. About a mile from Clayton he sank down by the road.
"Say, Ricks," he said abruptly; "I'm after quittin' peddlin'."