o dwindling
weak. Attentive observation of their brightness, colour, and length
of existence would have revealed the quality of the material burnt,
and through that, to some extent the natural produce of the district
in which each bonfire was situate. The clear, kingly effulgence that
had characterized the majority expressed a heath and furze country
like their own, which in one direction extended an unlimited number of
miles; the rapid flares and extinctions at other points of the compass
showed the lightest of fuel--straw, beanstalks, and the usual waste
from arable land. The most enduring of all--steady unaltering eyes
like Planets--signified wood, such as hazel-branches, thorn-faggots,
and stout billets. Fires of the last-mentioned materials were rare,
and though comparatively small in magnitude beside the transient
blazes, now began to get the best of them by mere long continuance.
The great ones had perished, but these remained. They occupied the
remotest visible positions--sky-backed summits rising out of rich
coppice and plantation districts to the north, where the soil was
different, and heath foreign and strange.

Save one; and this was the nearest of any, the moon of the whole
shining throng. It lay in a direction precisely opposite to that of
the little window in the vale below. Its nearness was such that,
notwithstanding its actual smallness, its glow infinitely transcended
theirs.

This quiet eye had attracted attention from time to time; and when
their own fire had become sunken and dim it attracted more; some even
of the wood fires more recently lighted had reached their decline, but
no change was perceptible here.

"To be sure, how near that fire is!" said Fairway. "Seemingly. I can
see a fellow of some sort walking round it. Little and good must be
said of that fire, surely."

"I can throw a stone there," said the boy.

"And so can I!" said Grandfer Cantle.

"No, no, you can't, my sonnies. That fire is not much less than a
mile off, for all that 'a seems so near."

"'Tis in the heath, but not furze," said the turf-cutter.

"'Tis cleft-wood, that's what 'tis," said Timothy Fairway. "Nothing
would burn like that except clean timber. And 'tis on the knap afore
the old captain's house at Mistover. Such a queer mortal as that man
is! To have a little fire inside your own bank and ditch, that nobody
else may enjoy it or come anigh it! And what a zany an old chap must
be, to light a bonfire when th