“Gert, gay, fanciful doin’s to-night,” said the driver, looking aloft where Cosdon Beacon swelled.  “You can see the light from the blaze up-long, an’ now an’ again you can note a sign in the night like a red-hot wire drawed up out the airth.  They ’m sky-rockets, I judge.”

“’T is a joyful night, sure ’nough.”

The driver illustrated a political ignorance quite common in rural districts ten years ago and not conspicuously rare to-day.  He laboured under uneasy suspicions that the support of monarchy was a direct and dismal tax upon the pockets of the poor.

“Pity all the fuss ban’t about a better job,” he said.  “Wan auld, elderly lady ’s so gude as another, come to think of it.  Why shouldn’t my mother have a jubilee?”

“What for?  ’Cause she’ve borne a damned fule?” asked the other man angrily.  “If that’s your way o’ thought, best keep it in your thoughts.  Anyhow, I’ll knock your silly head off if I hears another word to that tune, so now you knaw.”

The speaker was above medium height and breadth, the man who drove him happened to be unusually small.

“Well, well, no offence,” said the latter.

“There is offence; an’ it I heard a lord o’ the land talk that way to-night, I’d make un swallow every dirty word of it.  To hell wi’ your treason!”

The driver changed the subject.

“Now you can see a gude few new fires,” he said.  “That’s the Throwleigh blaze; an’ that, long ways off, be—­”

“Yes Tor by the look of it.  All Chagford’s traapsed up-long, I warn ’e, to-night.”

They were now approaching a turning of the ways and the traveller suddenly changed his destination.

“Come to think of it, I’ll go straight on,” he said.  “That’ll save you a matter o’ ten miles, tu.  Drive ahead a bit Berry Down way.  Theer I’ll leave ‘e an’ you’ll be back home in time to have some fun yet.”

The driver, rejoicing at this unhoped diminution of his labours, soon reached the foot of a rough by-road that ascends to the Moor between the homesteads of Berry Down and Creber.

Yes Tor now arose on the left under its cap of flame, and the wayfarer, who carried no luggage, paid his fare, bid the other “good-night,” and then vanished into the darkness.

He passed between the sleeping farms, and only watch-dogs barked out of the silence, for Gidleigh folks were all abroad that night.  Pressing onwards, the native hurried to Scorhill, then crossed the Teign below Batworthy Farm, passed through the farmyard, and so proceeded to the common beneath Yes Tor.  He whistled as he went, then stopped a moment to listen.  The first drone of music and remote laughter reached his ear.  He hurried onwards until a gleam lighted his face; then he passed through the ring of beasts, still glaring fascinated around the fire; and finally he pushed among the people.

He stood revealed and there arose a sudden whisper among some who knew him, but whom he knew not.  One or two uttered startled cries at this apparition, for all associated the newcomer with events and occurrences widely remote from the joy of the hour.  How he came among them now, and what event made it possible for him to stand in their midst a free man, not the wisest could guess.