covering the ricks that very night. All was silent within, and he
would have passed on in the belief that the party had broken up, had
not a dim light, yellow as saffron by contrast with the greenish
whiteness outside, streamed through a knot-hole in the folding doors.

Gabriel looked in. An unusual picture met his eye.

The candles suspended among the evergreens had burnt down to their
sockets, and in some cases the leaves tied about them were scorched.
Many of the lights had quite gone out, others smoked and stank,
grease dropping from them upon the floor. Here, under the table, and
leaning against forms and chairs in every conceivable attitude except
the perpendicular, were the wretched persons of all the work-folk,
the hair of their heads at such low levels being suggestive of mops
and brooms. In the midst of these shone red and distinct the figure
of Sergeant Troy, leaning back in a chair. Coggan was on his back,
with his mouth open, huzzing forth snores, as were several others;
the united breathings of the horizonal assemblage forming a subdued
roar like London from a distance. Joseph Poorgrass was curled round
in the fashion of a hedge-hog, apparently in attempts to present the
least possible portion of his surface to the air; and behind him
was dimly visible an unimportant remnant of William Smallbury.
The glasses and cups still stood upon the table, a water-jug being
overturned, from which a small rill, after tracing its course with
marvellous precision down the centre of the long table, fell into the
neck of the unconscious Mark Clark, in a steady, monotonous drip,
like the dripping of a stalactite in a cave.

Gabriel glanced hopelessly at the group, which, with one or two
exceptions, composed all the able-bodied men upon the farm. He saw
at once that if the ricks were to be saved that night, or even the
next morning, he must save them with his own hands.

A faint "ting-ting" resounded from under Coggan's waistcoat. It was
Coggan's watch striking the hour of two.

Oak went to the recumbent form of Matthew Moon, who usually undertook
the rough thatching of the home-stead, and shook him. The shaking
was without effect.

Gabriel shouted in his ear, "where's your thatching-beetle and
rick-stick and spars?"

"Under the staddles," said Moon, mechanically, with the unconscious
promptness of a medium.

Gabriel let go his head, and it dropped upon the floor like a bowl.
He then went to Susan Tall's