"'I'm here, Ben,'" he retorted, mimicking her tone. "There you are, Sarah, without the sperit of a mouse. Have you seen, or have you not, what's up all over the town?"
"Yes, to be sure," replied Sarah Holt; "and it's a faithful description of the children. Why, they are as like what that description says of 'em as two peas, Ben."
"I'm not saying they aint," snapped Ben, in a very indignant voice; "but what I do want to know is this--what's to be done if they are found and we are discovered to have bought 'em? We had all our plans arranged, and we have taken this field for a fortnight; but, bad as the loss will be to ourselves, it'll be better than the perlice discovering that we had anything to do with them children. The fact is this, Sarah: I'm going to pack our traps and be off out of this, to-night at the latest."
"Perhaps you are right, Ben," said the woman, in a very sad tone; "only," she added, with a sigh, "if we are really going, may not I run up to Delaney Manor and just give 'em a hint? It seems so dreadful to me if anything should happen to them little kids, more particular to little Diana, who was the mortal image of my Rachel who died."
"If you do anything of the kind I'll kill you," roared the man. "Do you want to see me locked up in prison for kidnaping children? No; we must be out of this to-night, and I must lose the ten pund I paid for the use of the field."
By this time the news of the posters had spread not only through the whole town, but amongst the members of Ben Holt's troupe. The men and women in the troupe were all interested and excited, and whenever they had a spare moment they used to run out to read the poster which Fortune had been clever enough to dictate.
Meanwhile, that good woman herself was by no means idle.
"I have done something," she said to Iris, "and what I have done at Madersley ought to have been done before now all over the length and breadth of England. But now, Miss Iris, having put the posters up, it doesn't mean that we are to be idle. We have got to do more. I have my eye on that circus. They says it's a very pretty circus indeed, and there are a lot of entertaining spectacles to be viewed there. Now, what do you say to you and me and Mr. Dolman, if he likes to come, and Master Apollo going this afternoon to see the performance?"