The daylight was fading now in the clearing, and presently a few thin stars were out. It might have occurred to persons of better regulated fancies than ours that they were due at supper long since with other friends of staider qualities, and that now the wood-paths were too dark to follow. Perhaps it did; but it could not have seemed a fair reason to be troubled, that we were last seen in company with the Free Traveller, so fat and friendly a man. I remember better that the Black Pond reflected no stars, that the gleams from the fire played fearful games along the wood's edge and the bowlders, and how, beyond the Black Pond, the swamp and the close-cuddled hills, the lights of Hamilton crouched low under the sky. Opposite us across the fire sat that woman who said nothing, and her face was shadowed by her shawl.
Showman Bobby and the Free Traveller went to sleep, Bobby on his face and the Free Traveller accommodating himself. The Prophet sat up and kept us company; for we asked him questions naturally, and he seemed interested to answer, and was fluent and striking in his speech. They were a runout Company and very low in their luck; and it seemed that Bobby was the manager, a tumbler himself by profession and in that way of life since childhood; and the Free Traveller was apt to be an Australian giant now, but in earlier years had been given to footing from place to place and living as he might. The Prophet called him a skilful man at getting things out of women, partly by experience, and partly by reason of his size and the mildness of his manners. As for the Black Pond Clearing, it was well known to people of the road, even to orange-men and pack-peddlers, being a hidden place with wood and water and shelter in the caves from rain.
“That light in the south is Hamilton,” said Chub Leroy.
The Prophet started and looked anxiously across the fire, but the woman did not move. Then he drew nearer us and spoke lower.
“You look out,” he said. “She ain't right in her head. Bobby painted the kid for a pappoose. It took the shakes and died queer. You'd better lie down, Cass,” speaking across the fire to the woman, who turned her head and stared at him directly. “You'd better lie down.”
She drew back from the fire noiselessly and lay down, wrapping her shawl about her head.
“I ain't been a circus heeler all my time,” began the Prophet. “I been a gentleman. Neither has Humpy, I reckon. When I met Bobby it was West and he ran a dime museum. He took me in for being a gifted talker, and I was that low in my luck. She and Bobby was married sometime, and she did acts like the Circassian Beauty, and the Headless Woman, and the Child of the Aztecs. Humpy's gifts lies in his size, and he's a powerful strong man, too, more than you'd think, and he can get himself up for a savage to look like a loose tornado. Look at him now. Ain't he a heap? There was a three-eyed dog in the show that you could n't tell that the extra eye was n't so hardly, and a snake that was any kind of a snake according as you fixed him, his natural color being black. We came East with Forepaugh's. Bobby bought a tent in Chicago, and we came to Hamilton a fortnight ago. Now there's Hamilton that's a-shining off there with its lights. And we run away from it in the night a week come to-morrow, or next day, I forget. We left the tent and outfit which was come down on by a Dutch grocer for debt, and Cassie's baby was dead in the tent. Bobby painted him too thick. And there was a lot of folks looking for us with sticks. Now, that was n't right. Think Bobby'd have poisoned his own kid if he'd known better about painting him, a kid that was a credit to the show! That's what they said. Think folks coming round with sticks and a-howling blasphemous is going to help out any family mourning! That ain't my idea.
“Then a fellow says, 'I don't know anything about it,' he says, 'and I don't want to, but I know you get out of here quick.'
“And they drove us out of Hamilton that night ten miles in a covered cart, and left us in the road. And the Dutch grocer got the outfit. I reckon the circus and the city has buried the kid between 'em. Hey? Sh! She's got a quirk. All I know is Fore-paugh's shook us as if we was fleas.”
The Prophet looked over to where Cassie lay, but she did not stir. Anyway, if she heard, it was the Prophet's fault. “They're awful poor company,” he said plaintively, “Bobby and Cass. She takes on terrible. She's took a notion that baby ain't buried right. She thinks—well, I don't know. Now that ain't my way of looking at things, but I did n't own the outfit. It was Bobby's outfit, and the Dutch grocer got it.”