expressed a heath and furze country like their own, which in one direction extended an unlimited number of miles; the rapid flares and extinctions at other points of the compass showed the lightest of fuel—­straw, beanstalks, and the usual waste from arable land.  The most enduring of all—­steady unaltering eyes like Planets—­signified wood, such as hazel-branches, thorn-faggots, and stout billets.  Fires of the last-mentioned materials were rare, and though comparatively small in magnitude beside the transient blazes, now began to get the best of them by mere long continuance.  The great ones had perished, but these remained.  They occupied the remotest visible positions—­sky-backed summits rising out of rich coppice and plantation districts to the north, where the soil was different, and heath foreign and strange.

Save one; and this was the nearest of any, the moon of the whole shining throng.  It lay in a direction precisely opposite to that of the little window in the vale below.  Its nearness was such that, notwithstanding its actual smallness, its glow infinitely transcended theirs.

This quiet eye had attracted attention from time to time; and when their own fire had become sunken and dim it attracted more; some even of the wood fires more recently lighted had reached their decline, but no change was perceptible here.

“To be sure, how near that fire is!” said Fairway.  “Seemingly.  I can see a fellow of some sort walking round it.  Little and good must be said of that fire, surely.”

“I can throw a stone there,” said the boy.

“And so can I!” said Grandfer Cantle.

“No, no, you can’t, my sonnies.  That fire is not much less than a mile off, for all that ’a seems so near.”

“’Tis in the heath, but not furze,” said the turf-cutter.

“’Tis cleft-wood, that’s what ’tis,” said Timothy Fairway.  “Nothing would burn like that except clean timber.  And ’tis on the knap afore the old captain’s house at Mistover.  Such a queer mortal as that man is!  To have a little fire inside your own bank and ditch, that nobody else may enjoy it or come anigh it!  And what a zany an old chap must be, to light a bonfire when there’s no youngsters to please.”

“Cap’n Vye has been for a long walk to-day, and is quite tired out,” said Grandfer Cantle, “so ’tisn’t likely to be he.”

“And he would hardly afford good fuel like that,” said the wide woman.

“Then it must be his grand-daughter,” said Fairway.  “Not that a body of her age can want a fire much.”

“She is very strange in her ways, living up there by herself, and such things please her,” said Susan.

“She’s a well-favoured maid enough,” said Humphrey the furze-cutter; “especially when she’s got one of her dandy gowns on.”

“That’s true,” said Fairway.  “Well, let her bonfire burn an’t will.  Ours is well-nigh out by the look o’t.”

“How dark ’tis now the fire’s gone down!” said Christian Cantle, looking behind him with his hare eyes.  “Don’t ye think we’d better get home-along, neighbours?  The heth isn’t haunted, I know; but we’d better get home...  Ah, what was that?”