The chap­ter opens with the strik­ing of a town clock as Charles Hal­loway, bent over a table in the library, hur­ried­ly arranges books under a green-shad­ed lamp. His antic­i­pa­tion seems pal­pa­ble as he inter­acts inti­mate­ly with the pages, whis­per­ing to him­self and echo­ing the silent ambiance of the library. Frag­ments of his day flash through his mind: min­gling uneasi­ly with car­ni­val crowds, evad­ing the shad­ows of dubi­ous fig­ures, and man­ag­ing thoughts of Jim and Will, two boys he sens­es are caught in a web of dan­ger.

The library feels like a sanc­tu­ary for Hal­loway, a place where he attempts to deci­pher the chaos outside—an unset­tling car­ni­val filled with fright­en­ing and strange sights. He men­tal­ly cat­a­logs the books laid out like a clock, each rep­re­sent­ing dif­fer­ent themes of dark­ness and temptation—from ‘Dr Faus­tus’ to ‘The Tor­ments of the Damned.’ The col­lec­tion reflects the fears and enig­mas he per­ceives sur­round­ing his world and the boys’ pos­si­ble fates.

As he flips through a book on phys­iog­no­my, he ques­tions the nature of Jim and Will—are they inno­cent souls look­ing up at the face of evil? Or do the car­ni­val’s grotesque char­ac­ters mir­ror the dark­er aspects of human­i­ty? Hal­loway grap­ples with the dual­i­ty of appear­ance ver­sus real­i­ty, con­clud­ing that if judg­ments were based sole­ly on phys­i­cal traits, even the so-called freaks might be no worse than count­less oth­ers in soci­ety.

Feel­ing a grow­ing sense of dread, he recalls a line from Shakespeare—“By the prick­ing of my thumbs, some­thing wicked this way comes”—marking the grav­i­ty of his thoughts. He knows he can­not escape this feel­ing, espe­cial­ly know­ing he must con­front it if he hopes to ensure the safe­ty of Jim and Will. Hal­loway gazes out into the night, yearn­ing for the boys’ return and feel­ing the encroach­ing pale real­iza­tion of the dan­gers they face. The chap­ter encap­su­lates themes of fear, impend­ing chaos, and the com­plex­i­ties of moral judg­ment, leav­ing Hal­loway filled with a sense of melan­cholic antic­i­pa­tion.

Wait­ing ai