the crowd was thickest and the noise greatest.  Three or four donkeys loaded with tin-ware were standing near the crowd, when one of them, ambitious of distinction, began clambering over the tops of the others in an insane attempt to get at some greens, temptingly displayed before him.  Rattle, bang! right and left went the tins, and in rushed men and women with cudgels; but donkey was not to be stopped, and for four or five minutes the whole fair seemed gathered around the scene, cheering and laughing, with a spirit that set Caper wild with excitement, and induced him to work his way through the crowd and present one old woman who had finally conquered the donkey, with two large roses, an action which was enthusiastically applauded by the entire assembly.

‘Bravo! bravo! well done, O Englishman!’ went up the shout.

A little farther on they came to a large traveling van, one end of which was arranged as a platform in the open air.  Here a female dentist, in a sea-green dress, with her sleeves rolled up and a gold bracelet on her right arm, held in both hands a tooth-extractor, bound round with a white handkerchief—­to keep her steady, as Caper explained, while she pulled a tooth from the head of a young man who was down in front of her on his knees.  Her assistant, a good-looking young man, in very white teeth and livery, sold some patent toothache drops:  Solo cinque baiocchi il fiasco, S’gnore.

Caper having seen the tooth extracted, cried, ‘Bravissima!’ as if he had been at the opera, and threw some roses at the prima donna dentista, who acknowledged the applause with a bow, and requested the Signore to step up and let her draw him out.  This he declined, pleading the fact that he had sound teeth.  The dentista congratulated him, in spite of his teeth.

‘But come!’ said Bagswell; ’look at that group of men and women in Albano costume; there is a chance to make a deuced good sketch.’

Two men and three women were seated in a circle; they were laughing and talking, and cutting and eating large slices of raw ham and bread, while they passed from one to another a three-gallon keg of wine, and drank out of the bung.  As one of the hearty, laughing, jolly, brown-eyed girls lifted up the keg, Caper pulled out sketch-book and pencil to catch an outline sketch—­of her head thrown back, her fine full throat and breast heaving as the red wine ran out of the barrel, and the half-closed, dreamy eyes, and pleasure in the face as the wine slowly trickled down her throat.  One of the men noted the artist making a ritratto, and laughing heartily, cried out:  ’Oh! but you’ll have to pay us well for taking our portraits!’ And the girl, slowly finishing her long draught, looked merrily round, shook her finger at the artist, laughed, and—­the sketch was finished.  Then Caper taking Roejean’s roses, went laughingly up to the girl with brown eyes and fine throat, in Albano costume, and begged that