“‘Goodness,’ I cried at the sight of it, ‘we must be careful else some one will capture you and take you back home before you are ready to go!’
“‘Careful, bosh,’ retorted Gray Ears. ‘Why begin being careful when I am already captured?’
“‘Already captured!’ I exclaimed in amazement. ‘By whom?’
“‘Why,’ said he, ‘by none other than Diggeldy Dan.’
“‘But I don’t understand,’ I began. ‘You mean—’
“‘That you are to take me back to the Very Biggest Circus and claim the reward—the reward of being allowed to be one of its clowns. So come now, make haste and let us break camp. For we must be ready to enter the big tent to-night and between now and then we have a long way to go.’”
CHAPTER XV
IN WHICH DAN AND GRAY EARS ARRIVE AT THEIR GOAL
“Some day I may relate the happenings that fell to our lot between the heart of the woods and the great river’s edge,” continued Diggeldy Dan. “But I fancy you are just now most impatient to learn exactly what came to pass when Gray Ears and I reached our long journey’s end. So, suppose we all shut our eyes very tight, give a marvelous jump and, thus leaving the point where breakfast was had, land plump on the spot from whence I got my first glimpse of the tents that were to be my new home.
“The day was most done when, forcing his way through a thicket, Gray Ears emerged on a grass-covered ridge that reclined with its head in the woods and its feet at the brim of a river. The stream wound to the north and to the south, while just across it—and so very near the bank that one wondered the buildings did not tumble into the water—lay a city. And within the city—close by the edge that was nearest us—sprawled a great, billowing something of dazzling white. This something swayed gently in the sun’s lowering rays or waved to the breeze with its pennants and flags of yellow and blue. Yes, there it lay, quite as if it awaited our coming—the home of the biggest circus of all.
“‘And to-night, when darkness has come, we shall both cross the river and so reach the very rear of the tents,’ said Gray Ears, as his eyes followed mine over the face of the stream.