They passed the Hollys' cottage and stable, and braved the undiscovered country.
The road twisted between tall hedgerows, black in the shadow of elms.
No rain had fallen for many days, and the powdered dust lay so thick underfoot, that twice or thrice Tilda halted--still holding the boy's hand--in doubt if they had wandered off upon turf.

But always, as they hesitated thus, 'Dolph came trotting back to reassure them.
In this manner, trotting and pausing, they had covered a bare three-quarters of a mile when there smote on their ears a throbbing of the air--a thud-thud which Arthur Miles took for the beat of a factory engine, so like it was to the echoes that had floated daily, and all day long, across the Orphanage wall; but Tilda, after hearkening a moment, announced it to be the bass of Gavel's steam organ.

The hoot of a whistle presently confirmed her guess.
'Dolph was steering them steadily towards the sound; and a glow in the sky, right ahead and easily discernible, would have guided them even without his help.

Tilda recognised that glow also.
"And the best is, it means Bill," she promised.
But they did not catch the tune itself until they were close upon the meadow.

At the top of a rise in the road it broke on them, the scene almost simultaneously with its music; and a strange scene it was, and curiously beautiful--a slope, and below the slope a grassy meadow set with elms; a blaze of light, here and there in the open spaces; in one space a steam roundabout revolving with mirrors, in another the soft glow of naphtha-lamps through tent cloth; glints of light on the boughs, dark shadows of foliage, a moving crowd, its murmur so silenced by music and the beat of a drum that it seemed to sway to and fro without sound, now pressing forward into the glare, now dissolving into the penumbra.
Arthur Miles paused, trembling.