Page:Stringer - Lonely O'Malley.djvu/112

 chastening one, but through it he learned, as other warriors had learned, that women cannot make up all a man's world, that Calypso cannot always hold out her softer charms to a Ulysses, old or new, that the tawniest-haired Cleopatra cannot always bind a Cæsar in slavish bonds. He hungered once more for a world of arms and men, for the turbulence of his own kind, for the dust and battle of real boyhood!

Then, finding that even work on his ever-troublesome flying-machine palled, he descended from the hay-loft, and making his escape over the back fence, sat in the sun and moodily yet raptly contemplated the circus poster covering one whole side of the Barrisons' barn. Then, with a sudden tingle of delight, he saw, as he looked at the foot-bill, that the following day was the date for its arrival. That such an event could slip his memory showed eloquently enough how enslaved and unmanned he had been. The circus was coming, and he had forgotten it!

Then he fell to studying the poster once more, wondering if there would be more than eleven elephants—that colossal number