was instantaneous, Mrs. Fennel privately enjoining the players on
no account to let the dance exceed the length of a quarter of an
hour.

But Elijah and the boy, in the excitement of their position, quite
forgot the injunction. Moreover, Oliver Giles, a man of seventeen,
one of the dancers, who was enamoured of his partner, a fair girl of
thirty-three rolling years, had recklessly handed a new crown-piece
to the musicians as a bribe to keep going as long as they had muscle
and wind. Mrs. Fennel, seeing the steam begin to generate on the
countenances of her guests, crossed over and touched the fiddler's
elbow and put her hand on the serpent's mouth. But they took no
notice, and, fearing she might lose her character of genial hostess
if she were to interfere too markedly, she retired and sat down
helpless. And so the dance whizzed on with cumulative fury, the
performers moving in their planet-like courses, direct and retrograde,
from apogee to perigee, till the hand of the well-kicked clock at
the bottom of the room had travelled over the circumference of an
hour.

While these cheerful events were in course of enactment within
Fennel's pastoral dwelling, an incident having considerable bearing
on the party had occurred in the gloomy night without. Mrs. Fennel's
concern about the growing fierceness of the dance corresponded in
point of time with the ascent of a human figure to the solitary
hill of Higher Crowstairs from the direction of the distant town.
This personage strode on through the rain without a pause, following
the little worn path which, farther on in its course, skirted the
shepherd's cottage.