ues and darting flashes, rushed up into the sky. It was
like some huge giant suddenly standing up, straining upward and abruptly
spreading his great arms out across the sky. It cast the night back upon
them, utterly hiding and obliterating the incandescence of the sun that
rose behind it. All Hickleybrow was soon aware of that stupendous pillar
of smoke, and came out upon the crest, in various _deshabille_, to watch
them coming.

Behind, like some fantastic fungus, this smoke pillar swayed and
fluctuated, up, up, into the sky--making the Downs seem low and all
other objects petty, and in the foreground, led by Cossar, the makers of
this mischief followed the path, eight little black figures coming
wearily, guns shouldered, across the meadow.

As Bensington looked back there came into his jaded brain, and echoed
there, a familiar formula. What was it? "You have lit to-day--? You have
lit to-day--?" Then he remembered Latimer's words: "We have lit this day
such a candle in England as no man may ever put out again--"

What a man Cossar was, to be sure! He admired his back view for a space,
and was proud to have held that hat. Proud! Although he was an eminent
investigator and Cossar only engaged in applied science.

Suddenly he fell shivering and yawning enormously and wishing he was
warmly tucked away in bed in his little flat that looked out upon Sloane
Street. (It didn't do even to think of Cousin Jane.) His legs became
cotton strands, his feet lead. He wondered if any one would get them
coffee in Hickleybrow. He had never been up all night for
three-and-thirty years.

VIII.

And while these eight adventurers fought with rats about the
Experimental Farm, nine miles away, in the village of Cheasing
Eyebright, an old lady with an excessive nose struggled with great
difficulties by the light of a flickering candle. She gripped a sardine
tin opener in one gnarled hand, and in the other she held a tin of
Herakleophorbia, which she had resolved to open or die. She struggled
indefatigably, grunting at each fresh effort, while through the flimsy
partition the voice of the Caddles infant wailed.

"Bless 'is poor 'art," said Mrs. Skinner; and then, with her solitary
tooth biting her lip in an ecstasy of determination, "Come _up_!"

And presently, "_Jab_!" a fresh supply of the Food of the Gods was let
loose to wreak its powers of giantry upon the world.

CHAPTER THE FOURTH.

THE GIANT CHILDREN.

I.

For