they could work their way to the top again, and have anew the same
exciting run down through. Dick's feelings on actually reaching the top
in spite of his doubts were supplemented by a mortal fear that the
fiddling might even stop at this supreme moment; which prompted him to
convey a stealthy whisper to the far-gone musicians, to the effect that
they were not to leave off till he and his partner had reached the bottom
of the dance once more, which remark was replied to by the nearest of
those convulsed and quivering men by a private nod to the anxious young
man between two semiquavers of the tune, and a simultaneous "All right,
ay, ay," without opening the eyes. Fancy was now held so closely that
Dick and she were practically one person. The room became to Dick like a
picture in a dream; all that he could remember of it afterwards being the
look of the fiddlers going to sleep, as humming-tops sleep, by increasing
their motion and hum, together with the figures of grandfather James and
old Simon Crumpler sitting by the chimney-corner, talking and nodding in
dumb-show, and beating the air to their emphatic sentences like people
near a threshing machine.

The dance ended. "Piph-h-h-h!" said tranter Dewy, blowing out his breath
in the very finest stream of vapour that a man's lips could form. "A
regular tightener, that one, sonnies!" He wiped his forehead, and went
to the cider and ale mugs on the table.

"Well!" said Mrs. Penny, flopping into a chair, "my heart haven't been in
such a thumping state of uproar since I used to sit up on old Midsummer-
eves to see who my husband was going to be."

"And that's getting on for a good few years ago now, from what I've heard
you tell," said the tranter, without lifting his eyes from the cup he was
filling. Being now engaged in the business of handing round