countenances of the group changed shape and position endlessly. All
was unstable; quivering as leaves, evanescent as lightning. Shadowy
eye-sockets, deep as those of a death's head, suddenly turned into pits
of lustre: a lantern-jaw was cavernous, then it was shining; wrinkles
were emphasized to ravines, or obliterated entirely by a changed ray.
Nostrils were dark wells; sinews in old necks were gilt mouldings;
things with no particular polish on them were glazed; bright objects,
such as the tip of a furze-hook one of the men carried, were as glass;
eyeballs glowed like little lanterns. Those whom Nature had depicted as
merely quaint became grotesque, the grotesque became preternatural; for
all was in extremity.

Hence it may be that the face of an old man, who had like others been
called to the heights by the rising flames, was not really the mere nose
and chin that it appeared to be, but an appreciable quantity of human
countenance. He stood complacently sunning himself in the heat. With
a speaker, or stake, he tossed the outlying scraps of fuel into the
conflagration, looking at the midst of the pile, occasionally lifting
his eyes to measure the height of the flame, or to follow the great
sparks which rose with it and sailed away into darkness. The beaming
sight, and the penetrating warmth, seemed to breed in him a cumulative
cheerfulness, which soon amounted to delight. With his stick in his hand
he began to jig a private minuet, a bunch of copper seals shining and
swinging like a pendulum from under his waistcoat: he also began to
sing, in the voice of a bee up a flue--

"The king' call'd down' his no-bles all',
By one', by two', by three';
Earl Mar'-shal, I'll' go shrive'-the queen',
And thou' shalt wend' with me'.