line of iron railings and another flight of granite steps leading
into the main street. The street curved uphill around the base of
this open ground, and came level with it just in front of the
Mayoralty, a tall stuccoed building where the public balls were
given, and the judges had their lodgings in assize time, and the
Colonel his quarters during the militia training.

Fine shows passed under Taffy's window. Twice a year came the
judges, with the sheriff in uniform and his chaplain, and his coach,
and his coachman and lackeys in powder and plush and silk stockings,
white or flesh-coloured; and the barristers with their wigs, and the
javelin men and silver trumpets. Every spring, too, the Royal
Rangers Militia came up for training. Suddenly one morning, in the
height of the bird-nesting season, the street would swarm with
countrymen tramping up to the barracks on the hill, and back, with
bundles of clothes and unblackened boots dangling. For the next six
weeks the town would be full of bugle calls, and brazen music, and
companies marching and parading in suits of invisible green, and
clanking officers in black, with little round forage caps, and silver
badges on their side-belts; and, towards evening, with men lounging
and smoking, or washing themselves in public before the doors of
their billets.

Usually too, Whitsun Fair fell at the height of the militia training;
and then for two days booths and caravans, sweet-standings and
shooting-galleries lined the main street, and Taffy went out with a
shilling in his pocket to enjoy himself. But the bigger shows--the
menagerie, the marionettes, and the travelling Theatre Royal--were
pitched on Mount Folly, just under his window. Sometimes the theatre
would stay a week or two after the fair was over, until even the boy