Through all of this, David slept as if drugged.
Daybreak came; the ghostly wagon train slipped from darkness into the
misty light of a new "day." Cocks were crowing afar and near, and
birds were chirping in the bushes at the roadside. Out of the sombre,
crinkling night rolled the red, and white, and golden juggernauts,
gradually taking shape in the gray dawn, crawling with sardonic
indifference past toll-gate and farmhouse, creaking and groaning and
snapping in weird, uncanny chorus.
Early risers were up to see the "circus" pass. It was something of an
epoch in the lives of those who dwelt afar from the madding crowd.
The elephant, the cages of wild beasts, the horses, the towering
chariots, the amazing pole wagons--all slipped down the road and over
the hill, strange, unusual objects that came but once a year and
seemed to leave the countryside smaller and more narrow than it had
been before.
Hunched-up drivers, sleepily handling a half-dozen reins, looked
neither to right nor left, but swore mechanically for the benefit of
the tired horses, and without compunction in the presence of roadside
spectators, male or female.
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