ing air, the blots of shade and flakes of light upon the
countenances of the group changed shape and position endlessly. All
was unstable; quivering as leaves, evanescent as lightning. Shadowy
eye-sockets, deep as those of a death's head, suddenly turned into
pits of lustre: a lantern-jaw was cavernous, then it was shining;
wrinkles were emphasized to ravines, or obliterated entirely by a
changed ray. Nostrils were dark wells; sinews in old necks were gilt
mouldings; things with no particular polish on them were glazed;
bright objects, such as the tip of a furze-hook one of the men
carried, were as glass; eyeballs glowed like little lanterns. Those
whom Nature had depicted as merely quaint became grotesque, the
grotesque became preternatural; for all was in extremity.

Hence it may be that the face of an old man, who had like others been
called to the heights by the rising flames, was not really the mere
nose and chin that it appeared to be, but an appreciable quantity of
human countenance. He stood complacently sunning himself in the heat.
With a speaker, or stake, he tossed the outlying scraps of fuel into
the conflagration, looking at the midst of the pile, occasionally
lifting his eyes to measure the height of the flame, or to follow the
great sparks which rose with it and sailed away into darkness. The
beaming sight, and the penetrating warmth, seemed to breed in him a
cumulative cheerfulness, which soon amounted to delight. With his
stick in his hand he began to jig a private minuet, a bunch of copper
seals shining and swinging like a pendulum from under his waistcoat:
he also began to sing, in the voice of a bee up a flue--

"The king' call'd down' his no-bles all',
By one', by two', by three';
Earl Mar'-shal, I'll' go shrive'-the queen',
And thou' shalt wend' with me'.

"A boon', a boon', quoth Earl' Mar-shal',
And fell' on his bend'-ded knee',
That what'-so-e'er' the queen' shall say',
No harm' there-of' may be'."

Want of breath prevented a continuance of the song; and the breakdown
attracted the attention of a firm-standing man of middle age, who
kept each corner of his crescent-shaped mouth rigorously drawn back
into his cheek, as if to do away with any suspicion of mirthfulness
which might erroneously have attached to him.

"A fair stave, Grandfer Cantle; but I am afeard 'tis too much for the
mouldy weasand of such a old man as you," he said to the wrinkled