She halted, spell-bound. He was playing, turning the crank with a swift, steady motion, his ragged hat tipped to one side.
Now she understood the box hanging from its strap. She danced up to him, and held out a hand. "Why, you're the hand-organ man!" she panted breathlessly. "And you got here as quick as I did!"
He stopped playing, "I'm the hand-organ man when I'm in town," he corrected. "Here, in the Land of the Lights, I'm the Man-Who-Makes-Faces."
The Man-Who-Makes-Faces! She looked at him with new interest. "Why, of course you are," she acknowledged. "Sometimes you make 'em in town."
"Sometimes in town I make an ugly one," he retorted. Whereupon he shouldered the hand-organ, grasped the curved knife, and started away. As he walked, he called aloud to every side, like a huckster.
"Here's where you get your ears sharpened!" he sang. "Ears sharpened! Eyes sharpened! Edges taken off of tongues!"
She trotted beside him, head up, gray eyes wide, lips parted. He was ascending a gentle rise toward a low hill not far distant. As she drew away from the stream and the glade, she heard, from somewhere far behind, a shrill voice. It called a name—a name strangely familiar. She paid no heed.
At the summit of the little hill, under some trees, he paused, and waved the kidnaper knife in circles. "Ears to sharpen!" he shrilled again. "Eyes to sharpen! Edges taken off of tongues!"
She smiled up at him engagingly, noting how his gray hair hung over the back of his collar. She felt no fear of him whatever. "I think you're nice, Mr. Man-Who-Makes-Faces," she announced presently. "I'm so glad I can look straight at you. I didn't know you, 'cause your voice is different, and 'cause I'd never seen you before 'cept when I was looking down at you."
He had been ignoring her. But now, "Wasn't my fault that we didn't meet face to face," he retorted. Though his voice was still cross, his round, bright eyes were almost kind. "If you'll remember I often came under your window."