wn
out a hint of a great revival to be held on Baal-fire Night (as he
called it).

The night was sultry and all but windless. For once the tormented
sands had rest. The flame of the bonfires shone yellow--
orange-yellow--and steady. He could see the dark figures of men and
women, passing between him and the nearest, on the high wastrel in
front of Tredinnis great gates. Their voices reached him in a
confused murmur, broken now and then by a child's scream of delight.
And yet a hush seemed to hang over sea and land: an expectant hush.
For weeks the sky had not rained. Day after day, a dull indigo blue
possessed it, deepening with night into duller purple, as if the
whole heavens were gathering into one big thundercloud, which menaced
but never broke. And in the hush of those nights a listener could
almost fancy he heard, between whiles, the rabbits stirring uneasily
in their burrows.

By-and-by the bonfire on the wastrel appeared to be giving out sparks
of light which blazed independently; yet without decreasing its own
volume of flame. The sparks came dancing, nearer and larger: the
voices grew more distinct. The revellers had kindled torches and
were advancing in procession to visit other bonfires. The torches,
too, were supposed to bless the fields they passed across. Small
blessing had they ever brought to the barren towans.

The procession rose and sank as it came over the uneven ridges like a
fiery snake; topped the nearest ridge and came pouring down past the
churchyard wall. At its head danced Lizzie Pezzack, shrieking like a
creature possessed, her hair loose and streaming while she whirled
her torch. Taffy knew these torches; bundles of canvas steeped in
tar and fastened in the middle to a stout stick or piece of chain.
Lizzie's was fastened to a chain; and as he watched her uplifted arm
swinging the blazing mass he found time to wonder how she escaped
setting her hair on fire. Other torch-bearers tossed their arms and
shouted as they passed. The smoke was suffocating, and across the
patch of quiet graveyard the heat smote on Taffy's face. But in the
crowd he saw two figures clearly--Jacky Pascoe and Squire Moyle; and
the Bryanite's face was agitated and white in the infernal glare.
He had given an arm to the Squire, who was clearly the centre of the
procession and tottered forward with jaws working and cavernous eyes.

"He's saved!" a voice shouted.

Others took up the cry. "Saved!" "Th