sound from these, that a combination of hundreds only just emerged from silence, and the myriads of the whole declivity reached the woman's ear but as a shrivelled and intermittent recitative. Yet scarcely a single accent among the many afloat to-night could have such power to impress a listener with thoughts of its origin. One inwardly saw the infinity of those combined multitudes: one perceived that each of the tiny trumpets was seized on, entered, scoured, and emerged from by the wind as thoroughly as if it were as vast as a crater.

The spirit moved them.' A meaning of the phrase forced itself upon the attention; and an emotional listener's fetichistic mood might have ended in one of more advanced quality. It was not, after all, that the left-hand expanse of old blooms spoke, or the right-hand, or those of the slope in front. It was the single person of something else speaking through each in turn.

Suddenly, on the barrow, there mingled with all this wild rhetoric of night a sound which modulated so naturally into the rest that its beginning and ending were hardly to be distinguished. The bluffs had broken silence, the bushes had broken silence, the heather-bells had broken silence; at last, so did the woman; and her articulation was but as another line of the same discourse as theirs. Thrown out on the winds, it became twined in with them, and with them it flew away.

What she uttered was a lengthened sighing, apparently at something in her mind which had led to her presence here. There was a spasmodic abandonment about it, as if, in allowing herself to utter the sound, the woman's brain had authorized what it could not regulate. One point was evident in this: she had been existing in a suppressed state, and not in one of languor or stagnation.

Far away down the valley the faint shine from the window of the inn still lasted on; and a few additional moments proved that the window, or what was within it, had more to do with the woman's sigh than had either her own actions or the scene immediately around. She lifted her left hand, and revealed that it held a closed telescope. This she rapidly extended, as if she were well accustomed to the operation, and raising it to her eye directed it exactly towards the light beaming from the inn.

The kerchief which had hooded her head was now a little thrown back, her face being somewhat elevated. A profile was visible against the dull monochrome of cloud around her; and it was as though side-shadows from the features of Marie Antoinette and Lord Byron had converged upwards from the tomb to form an image like neither but suggesting both. This, however, was mere

superficiality. In respect of character, a face may make certain admissions by its outline; but it fully confesses only in its changes. So much is this the case, that what is called the play of the features often helps more in understanding a man or woman than the earnest labours of all their other members together. Thus the night revealed little of her whose form it was embracing, for the mobile parts of her countenance could not be seen.

At last she gave up her spying attitude, closed the telescope, and turned to the decaying embers. From these no appreciable beams now radiated, except when a more than usually smart gust brushed over their faces and raised a fitful glow which came and went like the blush of a girl. She stooped over the silent circle, and, selecting from the brands a piece of stick which bore the largest live coal at its end, brought it to where she had been standing before.

She held the brand to the ground, blowing the red coal with her mouth at the same time. It faintly illuminated the sod, and revealed a small object. The object was an hourglass. She blew long enough to show that the sand had all slipped through.

Ah!' she said, as if surprised.

The light raised by her breath had been very precarious, and a momentary irradiation of flesh was all that it had disclosed of her face. That consisted of two matchless lips and a cheek only, her head being still enveloped. She threw away the stick, took the glass in her hand, the telescope under her arm, and moved on.

Along the ridge ran a faint foot-track, which the lady followed. Those who knew it well called it a path; and, while a mere visitor would have passed it unnoticed even by day, the regular haunters of the heath were at no loss for it at midnight. The whole secret of following these incipient paths, when there was not light enough in the atmosphere to show a turnpike-road, lay in the development of the sense of touch in the feet, which comes with years of nightrambling in little-trodden spots. To a walker practised in such places, a difference between impact on maiden herbage, and on the crippled stalks of a slight footway, is perceptible through the thickest boot or shoe.

The solitary figure who walked this beat took notice of the windy tune still played on the dead heath-bells. She did not turn her head to look at a group of dark creatures further on, who fled from her presence as she skirted a ravine where they fed. They were about a score of the small wild ponies known as heathcroppers. They roamed at large on the undulations of Egdon, but in numbers too few to detract much from the solitude.

The pedestrian noticed nothing just now, and a clue to her ab

straction was afforded by a trivial incident. A bramble caught hold of her skirt, and checked her progress. Instead of putting it off and hastening along, she yielded herself up to the pull, and stood passively still. When she began to extricate herself, it was by turning round and round on her axis, and so unwinding the prickly switch. She was in a desponding reverie.

Her course was in the direction of the small undying fire which had drawn the attention of the men on Blackbarrow and of Wildeve in the valley below. A faint illumination from its rays began to grow upon her face, and it increased in definiteness as she drew nearer. The fire soon revealed itself to be kindled, not on the level ground, but on a salient corner or redan of earth, arising from the junction of two converging bank fences. Outside was a ditch, dry except immediately under the fire, where there was a pool, bearded all round by heather and rushes. In the smooth water of the pool the fire appeared upside down.

The banks meeting behind were bare of a hedge, save such as was formed by disconnected tufts of furze, standing upon stems along the top, like impaled heads above a city wall. A white mast, fitted up with spars and other nautical tackle, could be seen rising against the dark clouds whenever the flames played brightly enough to reach it. Altogether the scene had much the appearance of a fortification upon which had been kindled a beacon fire.

Nobody was visible; but ever and anon a whitish something moved above the bank from behind, and vanished again. Close watching would have shown it to be a small human hand, in the act of lifting pieces of fuel into the fire; but, for all that could be seen, the hand, like that which troubled Belshazzar, was there alone. Occasionally an ember rolled off the bank, and dropped with a hiss into the pool.

At one side of the pool, rough steps built of clods enabled anyone who wished to do so to mount the bank; and this the woman did. Within was a paddock in an uncultivated state, though bearing evidence of having once been tilled; but the heath and fern had insidiously crept in, and were reasserting their old supremacy. Further ahead were dimly visible an irregular dwelling-house, garden, and outbuildings, backed by a clump of firs.

The young lady-for youth had revealed its presence in her buoyant bound up the bank-walked along the top instead of descending inside, and came to the corner where the fire was burning. One reason for the permanence of the blaze was now manifest the fuel consisted of hard pieces of wood, cleft and sawnthe knotty boles of old thorn-trees which grew in twos and threes about the hill-sides. A yet unconsumed pile of these lay in the

inner angle of the bank; and from this corner the upturned face of a little boy greeted her eyes. He was dilatorily throwing up a piece of wood into the fire every now and then, an act which seemed to have engaged him a considerable part of the evening, for his face was somewhat weary.

'I am glad you have come, Miss Eustacia,' he said, with a sigh of relief. I don't like biding by myself."

'Nonsense! I have only been a little way for a walk. I have been gone only twenty minutes.'

6

'It seemed long,' murmured the sad boy. And you have been so many times.'

"Why, I thought you would be pleased to have a bonfire. you not much obliged to me for making you one?'

'Yes; but there's nobody here to play wi' me.'

'I suppose nobody has come while I've been away?'

Are

'Nobody except your grandfather: he looked out of doors once for 'ee. I told him you were walking round upon the hill to look at the other bonfires.'

'A good boy!'

"I think I hear him coming again, miss.'

An old man came into the remoter light of the fire from the direction of the homestead. He was the same who had overtaken the reddleman on the road that afternoon. He looked wistfully to the top of the bank at the woman who stood there, and his teeth, which were quite unimpaired, showed like parian from his parted lips.

When are you coming indoors, Eustacia?' he asked. 'Tis almost bed-time. I've been home these two hours, and am tired out. Surely 'tis somewhat childish of you to stay out playing at bonfires so long, and wasting such fuel. My precious thorn roots, the rarest of all firing, that I laid by on purpose for Christmasyou have burnt 'em nearly all!'

I promised Johnny a bonfire, and it pleases him not to let it go out just yet,' said Eustacia, in a way which told at once that she was absolute queen here. Grandfather, you go in to bed. I shall follow you soon. You like the fire, don't you, Johnny?'

6

The boy looked up doubtfully at her and murmured, 'I don't think I want it any longer.'

Her grandfather had turned back again, and did not hear the boy's reply. As soon as the white-haired man had vanished she said in a tone of pique to the child, Ungrateful little boy, how can you contradict me? Never shall you have a bonfire again unless you keep it up now. Come, tell me you like to do things for me, and don't deny it.'.

6

The repressed child said, Yes, I do,' and continued to stir the fire perfunctorily.

Stay a little longer, and I will give you a crooked sixpence,' said Eustacia, more gently. Put in one piece of wood every two or three minutes, but not too much at once. I am going to walk along the ridge a little longer, but I shall keep on coming to you. And if you hear a frog jump into the pond with a flounce, like a stone thrown in, be sure you run and tell me, because it is a sign of rain.'

'Yes, Eustacia.' Miss Vye, sir.'

'Miss Vy-stacia.'

'That will do. Now put in one stick more.'

The little slave went on feeding the fire as before. He seemed a mere automaton, galvanized into moving and speaking by the wayward Eustacia's will. He might have been the brass statue which Albertus Magnus is said to have animated just so far as to make it chatter, and move, and be his servant.

Before going on her walk again, the young girl stood still on the bank for a few instants and listened. It was to the full as lonely a place as Blackbarrow, though at rather a lower level; and it was more sheltered from wind and weather, on account of the few firs to the north. The bank enclosed the whole homestead, and well protected it from the lawless state of the world without; it was formed of thick square clods, dug from the ditch on the outside, and built up with a slight batter or incline, which forms no slight defence where hedges will not grow because of the wind and the wildness, and where wall materials are unattainable. Otherwise the situation was quite open, commanding the whole length of the valley which reached to the river behind Wildeve's house. High above this to the right, and much nearer hitherward than the Quiet Woman Inn, the blurred contour of Blackbarrow obstructed the sky.

After her attentive survey of the wild slopes and hollow ravines, a gesture of impatience escaped Eustacia. She vented petulant words every now and then; but there were sighs between her words, and sudden listenings between her sighs. Descending from her perch, she again sauntered off towards Blackbarrow, though this time she did not go the whole way.

Twice she reappeared at intervals of a few minutes, and each time she said:

'Not any flounce into the pond yet, little man?'

'No, Miss Eustacia,' the child replied.

VOL. XXXIV. NO. CXXXVI.

KK