e down the slope towards it, very cautiously,
fetching a circuit of the crowd. But as they reached the bottom of the
dip, on a sudden the crowd spread itself in lines right across their
path. Along these lines three or four men ran shouting, with ropes and
lanterns in their hands; and for one horrible moment it flashed on Tilda
that all this agitation must be the hue-and-cry.

"Clear the course! Course, course! Just startin'--the great Ladies'
Race! Clear the course!"

So it was only a race, after all! Tilda gripped the boy's hand tightly,
and held him at stand-still some paces in rear of the crowd. But of
this caution there was little need. All the faces were turned the other
way; all the crowd pressed forwards against the ropes which the
lantern-bearers drew taut to fence off the course. A pistol-shot
cracked out. Someone cried, "They're off!" and a murmur grew and
rolled nearer--rising, as it approached, from a murmur into great
waves--waves of Homeric laughter.

The race went by, and a stranger race Tilda had never beheld.
The competitors were all women, of all ages--village girls, buxom
matrons, withered crones--and each woman held a ladle before her in
which an egg lay balanced. Some were in sun-bonnets, others in their
best Sunday headdress. Some had kilted their skirts high. Others were
all dishevelled with the ardour of the race. The leader--a gaunt
figure with spoon held rigidly before her, with white stockinged legs,
and a truly magnificent stride--had come and passed before Tilda could
believe her eyes. After a long interval three others tottered by in a
cluster. The fifth dropped her egg and collapsed beside it, to be
hauled to her feet and revived by the stewards amid inextinguishable
laughter from the crowd. In all, fourteen competitors rolled in, some
with empty ladles, some laughing and protesting that not a step farther
could they stir. But, long before the crowd closed in, Tilda saw the
winner breast a glimmering line of tape stretched at the end of the
course, and heard the shouts saluting her victory.

"But who is it?"

"Miss Sally!"

"Miss Sally, if ever you heard the like! . . . But there! blood will
tell."

"It's years since I seen her," said a woman.

"You don't say! Never feared man nor devil, my mother used to tell.
An' to run in a race along with the likes of Jane Pratt! But you never
can reckon wi' the gentry--what they'll do, or what they won't."

"With half t