After that the inexorable minutes flew by until the performance ended.  In the menagerie tent Bud and his friends looked thirstily upon the cool, pink “schooners” of lemonade, and finally, when they had spent a few blissful moments with the monkeys and had enjoyed a last, long, lingering look at the elephants, they dragged themselves unwillingly away into the commonplace of sunshine and trees and blue sky.  Only the romantic touch of the side-show banners and the wonder of the gilded wagons assured them that their memories of the passing hour were not empty dreams.

The boys were standing enraptured before the picture of the fat woman upon the swaying canvas.  Bud had drifted away from them to glut his eyes upon the picture of the snakes writhing around the charmer.  The North-enders had been following Bud at a respectful distance, waiting for the opportunity which his separation from his clan gave to them.  They were enforced by a country boy of great reputed prowess in battle.  Bud did not know his danger until they pounced upon him.  In an instant the fight was raging.  Over the guy ropes it went, under the ticket wagon, into the thick of the lemonade stands.  And when Piggy and Abe and Jimmy had joined it, they trailed the track of the storm by torn hats, bruised, battle-scarred boys, and the wreckage incident to an enlivening occasion.  When his comrades found Bud, the argument had narrowed down to Bud and the boy from the country, the other wranglers having dropped out for heavy repairs.  The fight, which had been started to avenge ancient wrongs, particularly the wrongs of the bill-board, only added new wrongs to the list.  The country boy was striking wildly, and trying to clinch his antagonist, when the town marshal—­the bogie-man of all boys—­stopped the fight.  But of course no town marshal can come into the thick of a discussion in Boyville and know much of the merits of the question.  So when the marshal of Willow Creek saw Bud Perkins putting the finishing touches of a good trouncing on a strange boy, and also saw Bill Pennington’s boy, and Henry Sears’s boy, and Mrs. Carpenter’s boy, and old man Jones’s boy dancing around in high glee at the performance, he quietly gathered in the boys he knew, and let the stranger go.

[Illustration:  The other ’wranglers ... dropped out for heavy repair.]

Now no boy likes to be marched down the main street of his town with the callous finger of the marshal under his shirt-band.  The spectacle operates distinctly against the peace and dignity of Boyville for months thereafter.  For passing youths who forget there is a morrow jibe at the culprits and thus plant the seeds of dissensions which bloom in fights.  It was a sweaty, red-faced crew that the marshal dumped into Pennington’s grocery with, “Here, Bill, I found your boy and these young demons fightin’ down ’t the circus ground, and I took ’em in charge.  You ’tend to ’em, will you?”