traddled, a motionless figure.

The party round the tree became absorbed and excited as more ruddy
tongues of flame pricked upward from the dark tree. Pale candles became
evident, the air was luminous. The illumination was becoming complete,
harmonious.

Josephine suddenly looked round.

"Why-y-y!" came her long note of alarm.

A man in a bowler hat and a black overcoat stood on the edge of the
twilight.

"What is it?" cried Julia.

"_Homo sapiens_!" said Robert, the lieutenant. "Hand the light, Cyril."
He played the beam of light full on the intruder; a man in a bowler hat,
with a black overcoat buttoned to his throat, a pale, dazed, blinking
face. The hat was tilted at a slightly jaunty angle over the left eye,
the man was well-featured. He did not speak.

"Did you want anything?" asked Robert, from behind the light.

Aaron Sisson blinked, trying to see who addressed him. To him, they were
all illusory. He did not answer.

"Anything you wanted?" repeated Robert, military, rather peremptory.

Jim suddenly doubled himself up and burst into a loud harsh cackle of
laughter. Whoop! he went, and doubled himself up with laughter. Whoop!
Whoop! he went, and fell on the ground and writhed with laughter. He
was in that state of intoxication when he could find no release from
maddening self-consciousness. He knew what he was doing, he did
it deliberately. And yet he was also beside himself, in a sort of
hysterics. He could not help himself in exasperated self-consciousness.

The others all began to laugh, unavoidably. It was a contagion. They
laughed helplessly and foolishly. Only Robert was anxious.

"I'm afraid he'll wake the house," he said, looking at the doubled up
figure of Jim writhing on the grass and whooping loudly.

"Or not enough," put in Cyril Scott. He twigged Jim's condition.

"No--no!" cried Josephine, weak with laughing in spite of herself.
"No--it's too long--I'm like to die laughing--"

Jim embraced the earth in his convulsions. Even Robert shook quite
weakly with laughter. His face was red, his eyes full of dancing water.
Yet he managed to articulate.

"I say, you know, you'll bring the old man down." Then he went off again
into spasms.

"Hu! Hu!" whooped Jim, subsiding. "Hu!"

He rolled over on to his back, and lay silent. The others also became
weakly silent.

"What's amiss?" said Aaron Sisson, breaking this spell.

They all began to laugh again, except Jim, who lay on his back look