make sure of the way, as 'tis night-time, and I han't been
here for so long."

"Oh, well, you can get up," said Fairway. "What a turn it did give me
when I saw him!" he added to the whole group, the reddleman included.
"Lord's sake, I thought, whatever fiery mommet is this come to trouble
us? No slight to your looks, reddleman, for ye bain't bad-looking in
the groundwork, though the finish is queer. My meaning is just to
say how curious I felt. I half thought it 'twas the devil or the red
ghost the boy told of."

"It gied me a turn likewise," said Susan Nunsuch, "for I had a dream
last night of a death's head."

"Don't ye talk o't no more," said Christian. "If he had handkerchief
over his head he'd look for all the world like the Devil in the
picture of the Temptation."

"Well, thank you for telling me," said the young reddleman, smiling
faintly. "And good night t'ye all."

He withdrew from their sight down the barrow.

"I fancy I've seen that young man's face before," said Humphrey. "But
where, or how, or what his name is, I don't know."

The reddleman had not been gone more than a few minutes when another
person approached the partially revived bonfire. It proved to be a
well-known and respected widow of the neighbourhood, of a standing
which can only be expressed by the word genteel. Her face,
encompassed by the blackness of the receding heath, showed whitely,
and without half-lights, like a cameo.

She was a woman of middle-age, with well-formed features of the type
usually found where perspicacity is the chief quality enthroned
within. At moments she seemed to be regarding issues from a Nebo
denied to others around. She had something of an estranged mien; the
solitude exhaled from the heath was concentrated in this face that
had risen from it. The air with which she looked at the heathmen
betokened a certain unconcern at their presence, or at what might be
their opinions of her for walking in that lonely spot at such an hour,
this indirectly implying that in some respect or other they were not
up to her level. The explanation lay in the fact that though her
husband had been a small farmer she herself was a curate's daughter,
who had once dreamt of doing better things.

Persons with any weight of character carry, like planets, their
atmospheres along with them in their orbits; and the matron who
entered now upon the scene could, and usually did, bring her own
tone into a company. Her normal manner among