acked 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 sawn--the knotty boles of old thorn trees
which grew in twos and threes about the hillsides. 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 eves. He was dilatorily
throwing up a piece of wood into the fire every now and then, a
business 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."

"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. Are 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?"

"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
bedtime. 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 Christmas--you 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?"

The boy looked up doubtfully at her and murmured, "I don't think I