"Why, I thought you would be pleased to have a bonfire. Are you not much
obliged to me for making you one?"

"Yes; but there's nobody here to play wi' me."

"I suppose nobody has come while I've been away?"

"Nobody except your grandfather--he looked out of doors once for 'ee.
I told him you were walking round upon the hill to look at the other
bonfires."

"A good boy."

"I think I hear him coming again, miss."

An old man came into the remoter light of the fire from the direction
of the homestead. He was the same who had overtaken the reddleman on the
road that afternoon. He looked wistfully to the top of the bank at
the woman who stood there, and his teeth, which were quite unimpaired,
showed like parian from his parted lips.

"When are you coming indoors, Eustacia?" he asked. "'Tis almost bedtime.
I've been home these two hours, and am tired out. Surely 'tis somewhat
childish of you to stay out playing at bonfires so long, and wasting
such fuel. My precious thorn roots, the rarest of all firing, that I
laid by on purpose for Christmas--you have burnt 'em nearly all!"

"I promised Johnny a bonfire, and it pleases him not to let it go out
just yet," said Eustacia, in a way which told at once that she was