All at once the twins also saw and heard. Their attention was clutched, as it were, from those adorable monkeys a-horseback, which had come once more to the very spot before where they stood, and whom in their baby-souls they envied frantically.
"H-I-M!" echoed Sapphira, all her pretty pink-and-whiteness turned the pallor of fear.
There was a flash of bare feet and blue-denimed legs and the terrified twins had leaped the velvet-topped barrier bordering the ring and were scurrying heedlessly away, how and where they cared not except to be safe from that "Him" whose memory was a pain.
"My soul! They'll be killed--the little rascals!" cried Jim, and leaped the barrier, in pursuit.
"He can't catch 'em! I'll help!" and fat Monty rolled himself over the fence.
"What's up, boys?" demanded Frazer Moore; and, perceiving, added himself to the rescuing party. Ditto, Mike; then Littlejohn and Danny. This was the chance of a lifetime! to be themselves "performers." Only Melvin and Herbert rose, hesitating, amazed--and, seeing the little ones, whom everybody tried to catch and who eluded every grasp, in such imminent peril of trampling horse-hoofs, they also followed the leader.
Even Mr. Winters rose to his feet and watched in deep anxiety the outcome of this escapade, and the darting nimbleness of two small figures which everybody, from the ring-master down, was chasing like mad. Only the trained horsemen and their following troupe of monkeys kept on unmindful; while from the seats on every side ran shouts of laughter. To most of those onlookers this seemed a part, a delightfully arranged part, of the entertainment. Only those nearest, and the farrier was one of them, realized that the strange old man with the croaking voice was an alien to that scene. A half-crazed old man who felt called upon to deliver his "message" of warning to a sinful world, at all times, seasons, and places. He had stumbled upon this as a fine field and, unbalanced though his mind was, it had yet been clear enough for him to purchase a ticket and enter in the customary way.
"Oh! will he take the twins away?" asked Dorothy, clasping her hands in dismay. "And will they--be--killed!"
"I think not, to both questions. Evidently he has not perceived the children though they were quick enough to discover him. The pity! that one should inspire such fear in his own household! But, see! See!"