As Toby crawled sleepily out of bed, to close the shutters belonging to the two windows in his room that looked out on the back yard where his pets were snugly housed, he wondered whether the circus had arrived safely, and if the storm would keep them from erecting the big round-top. Fortunately they had all of Sunday to prepare for the next performance; and that would count for considerable, if repairs were necessary.
Just then, during a temporary lull in the gale, he distinctly heard the clock in the town hall tower strike three. This told him that the time fixed for the coming of the circus train had long since passed, and that they would undoubtedly be caught unprepared by the storm.
"But then they're used to roughing it," Toby thought, without stammering either, "because circus canvas hands have to rub up against hard things wherever they go. Haven't I had one boy tell me he never knew when he was going to get his next meal, and how for a month he didn't have regular sleep, and then it was on a hard board floor mebbe. Which makes me feel thankful for such a nice soft bed, though I c'n stand it sleepin' on the bare ground, when I have to in camp."
Yawning as he told himself this, Toby stood there by the open window for a minute trying to ascertain whether he could hear a lion roar or an elephant trumpet, for that would have made his ambitious blood leap through his veins. But the noise of the storm prevented him from hearing anything else, as the rain was beating down on a tin roof near by, while the wind howled through the trees as though pursued by a legion of demons.
So presently, when Toby found himself beginning to shiver, he crawled back again between the sheets, and snuggled down, glad that he had such a comfortable nook in which to lie while things were so unpleasant without.
Once Toby managed to get to sleep and he minded nothing else that occurred. Had that furious gale whipped the roof off the house he might have aroused sufficiently to ask if the danger were very great, and upon being reassured would have again dropped off on his voyage to slumberland.
It was daylight when Toby sat up in bed and rubbed his eyes.
"Gee!" he was saying to himself, "that was a corker of a dream, all right. Why, seemed like I could see everything the animals were adoing at that same waterhole where that man took his flashlight pictures; and it was so much like the real thing I could even hear 'em carryin' on when the flash scared the bunch."
Just then he started, and sat upright, staring hard toward the nearer window, through which it seemed a queer sound had come.
Toby could not ever remember having heard such a sound in all his life; it was different from everything he had ever come across, and seemed fraught with the most alarming potentialities.