"Chanticleer and the Law! Chanticleer and the Law!" shouted the crowd.
The fair had vanished. He was in a strange town, and was one of a great crowd of people all hurrying in the same direction.
"They are looking for the bleeding corpse," whispered the invisible cicerone, and the words filled Master Nathaniel with an unspeakable horror.
Then the crowd vanished, leaving him alone in a street as silent as the grave. He pressed forward, for he knew that he was looking for something; but what it was he had forgotten. At every street corner he came on a dead man, guarded by a stone beggar with a face like the herm in the Gibberty's orchard. He was almost choked by the horror of it. The terror became articulate: "Supposing one of the corpses should turn out to be that little lonely boy on the merry-go-round!"
This possibility filled him with an indescribable anguish.
Suddenly he remembered about Ranulph. Ranulph had gone to the country from which there is no return.
But he was going to follow him there and fetch him back. Nothing would stop him—he would push, if necessary, through fold after fold of dreams until he reached their heart.
He bent down and touched one of the corpses. It was warm, and it moved. As he touched it he realized that he had incurred the danger of contamination from some mysterious disease.
"But it isn't real, it isn't real," he muttered. "I'm inventing it all myself. And so, whatever happens, I shan't mind, because it isn't real."