with a giggle, waiting to be caught and rudely kissed.  Grand, patient, long-suffering fellows these men were, up at five, summer and winter, foddering their horses, maybe hours before there would be food for themselves, miserably paid, housed like cattle, and when the rheumatism seized them, liable to be flung aside like a broken graip.  As hard was the life of the women:  coarse food, chaff beds, damp clothes, their portion; their sweethearts in the service of masters who were reluctant to fee a married man.  Is it to be wondered that these lads who could be faithful unto death drank soddenly on their one free day, that these girls, starved of opportunities for womanliness, of which they could make as much as the finest lady, sometimes woke after a Muckley to wish that they might wake no more?  Our three brushed shoulders with the devils that had been let loose, but hardly saw them; they heard them, but did not understand their tongue.  The eight-o’clock bell had rung long since, and though the racket was as great as ever, it was only because every reveller left now made the noise of two.  Mothers were out fishing for their bairns.  The Haggerty-Taggertys had straggled home hoarse as crows; every one of them went to bed that night with a stocking round his throat.  Of Monypenny boys, Tommy could find none in the square but Corp, who, with another tooth missing, had been going about since six o’clock with his pockets hanging out, as a sign that all was over.  An awkward silence had fallen on the trio; the reason, that Tommy had only threepence left and the smallest of them cost threepence.  The reference of course is to the wondrous gold-paper packets of sweets (not unlike crackers in appearance) which are only seen at the Muckley, and are what every girl claims of her lad or lads.  Now, Tommy had vowed to Elspeth—­But he had also said to Grizel—­In short, how could he buy for both with threepence?

Grizel, as the stranger, ought to get—­But he knew Elspeth too well to believe that she would dry her eyes with that.

Elspeth being his sister—­But he had promised Grizel, and she had been so ill brought up that she said nasty things when you broke your word.

The gold packet was bought.  That is it sticking out of Tommy’s inside pocket.  The girls saw it and knew what was troubling him, but not a word was spoken now between the three.  They set off for home self-consciously, Tommy the least agitated on the whole, because he need not make up his mind for another ten minutes.  But he wished Grizel would not look at him sideways and then rock her arms in irritation.  They passed many merry-makers homeward bound, many of them following a tortuous course, for the Scottish toper gives way first in the legs, the Southron in the other extremity, and thus between them could be constructed a man wholly sober and another as drunk as Chloe.  But though the highway clattered with many feet, not a soul was in the double dykes, and at the easy end of that formidable path Grizel came to a determined stop.