pes in black
and white thorn, brought to that pattern by the slow torture of an
encircling woodbine during their growth, as the Chinese have been said
to mould human beings into grotesque toys by continued compression in
infancy. Two women, wearing men's jackets on their gowns, conducted in
the rear of the halting procession a pony-cart containing a tapped
barrel of beer, from which they drew and replenished horns that were
handed round, with bread-and-cheese from a basket.

The auctioneer adjusted himself to circumstances by using his
walking-stick as a hammer, and knocked down the lot on any convenient
object that took his fancy, such as the crown of a little boy's head,
or the shoulders of a by-stander who had no business there except to
taste the brew; a proceeding which would have been deemed humorous but
for the air of stern rigidity which that auctioneer's face preserved,
tending to show that the eccentricity was a result of that absence of
mind which is engendered by the press of affairs, and no freak of fancy
at all.

Mr. Melbury stood slightly apart from the rest of the Peripatetics, and
Grace beside him, clinging closely to his arm, her modern attire
looking almost odd where everything else was old-fashioned, and
throwing over the familiar garniture of the trees a homeliness that
seemed to demand improvement by the addition of a few contemporary
novelties also. Grace seemed to regard the selling with the interest
which attaches to memories revived after an interval of obliviousness.

Winterborne went and stood close to them; the timber-merchant spoke,
and continued his buying; Grace merely smiled. To justify his presence
there Winterborne began bidding for timber and fagots that he did not
want, pursuing the occupation in an abstracted mood, in which the
auctioneer's voice seemed to become one of the natural sounds of the
woodland. A few flakes of snow descended, at the sight of which a
robin, alarmed at these signs of imminent winter, and seeing that no
offence was meant by the human invasion, came and perched on the tip of
the fagots that were being sold, and looked into the auctioneer's face,
while waiting for some chance crumb from the bread-basket. Standing a
little behind Grace, Winterborne observed how one flake would sail
downward and settle on a curl of her hair, and how another would choose
her shoulder, and another the edge of her bonnet, which took up so much
of his attention that his bidd