s neatly trussed at the knee, was on
all-fours poking the blue and red potatoes into the glowing holes.
Another man with rough waggishness suddenly stirred the fire with an oak
branch, and sent a shower of sparks like rockets into the dark blue sky,
but so near that it caused the women to recoil, screaming and hiding
their faces on convenient shoulders, and lodged half-a-dozen instruments
of ignition and combustion in Sam Winnington's hair, singeing it and
scorching his ears. Had Sam not been the best-natured and most politic
fellow in the world, he would have dragged the aggressor by the collar
or the cuff over the smoking crackling wood, and made the ladies shriek
in greater earnest.

There was the strange ruddy light now on this face, now on that--on Will
Locke's as he overturned a shovel of groats at Dulcie's feet, and on
Dulcie's, so eager to cover his blunder, that she quite forgot the
circumstances of the case, and never came to herself till she had burnt
all the five tips of her rosy fingers catching the miller's pearls. Then
Will Locke was so sorry, stroked the fingers so daintily, hung upon
Cambridge so beseechingly, imploring her to prepare a cool mash for
Mistress Dulcie's finger points, the moment they were all gone--that
Dulcie could have cried for his tenderness of heart, and quickness and
keenness of remorse.

Conjure up the whole fourteen--the Vicar and Cambridge of the
number--when the fire had sunk white in ashes, when they could scarcely
see each other's faces, and only guess each other's garments, having a
round at "Puss in the corner," running here and rushing there, seizing
this shoulder-knot, holding tight like a child by that skirt, drawing
up, pulling back, whirling round all blowsy, all panting, all faint with
fun and laughter, and the roguish familiarity which yet thought no evil.
Very romping, was it not? very hoydenish? yes certainly. Very improper?
by no means. It was practised by dignitaries of the Church, still more
classic than the Vicar scuttling and ducking after Cambridge (you never
saw the like), and by the pink and pride of English womanhood.

Redwater was hospitable to these painter lads, as we understand
hospitality, unquestionably, ungrudgingly hospitable; but it was more
than hospitable to them, it was profitable to them in a pecuniary sense,
without which great test of its merits they could not long have tarried
within its bounds. They were neither fools nor hypocrites to pr