m of the figure, whirled about with the rest. She found that her
companions were mostly people of the neighbouring hamlets and
farms--Bloom's End, Mellstock, Lewgate, and elsewhere; and by degrees she
was recognized as she convulsively danced on, wishing that Mop would
cease and let her heart rest from the aching he caused, and her feet
also.

After long and many minutes the dance ended, when she was urged to
fortify herself with more gin-and-beer; which she did, feeling very weak
and overpowered with hysteric emotion. She refrained from unveiling, to
keep Mop in ignorance of her presence, if possible. Several of the
guests having left, Car'line hastily wiped her lips and also turned to
go; but, according to the account of some who remained, at that very
moment a five-handed reel was proposed, in which two or three begged her
to join.

She declined on the plea of being tired and having to walk to
Stickleford, when Mop began aggressively tweedling 'My Fancy-Lad,' in D
major, as the air to which the reel was to be footed. He must have
recognized her, though she did not know it, for it was the strain of all
seductive strains which she was least able to resist--the one he had
played when she was leaning over the bridge at the date of their first
acquaintance. Car'line stepped despairingly into the middle of the room
with the other four.

Reels were resorted to hereabouts at this time by the more robust
spirits, for the reduction of superfluous energy which the ordinary
figure-dances were not powerful enough to exhaust. As everybody knows,
or does not know, the five reelers stood in the form of a cross, the reel
being performed by each line of three alternately, the persons who
successively came to the middle place dancing in both directions.
Car'line soon found herself in this place, the axis of the whole
performance, and could not get out of it, the tune turning into the first
part without giving her opportunity. And now she began to suspect that
Mop did know her, and was doing this on purpose, though whenever she
stole a glance at him his closed eyes betokened obliviousness to
everything outside his own brain. She continued to wend her way through
the figure of 8 that was formed by her course, the fiddler introducing
into his notes the wild and agonizing sweetness of a living voice in one
too highly wrought; its pathos running high and running low in endless
variation, projecting through her nerves excruciating