“Hold your tongue.  What is it?” said Fairway.

“Hoi-i-i-i!” cried a voice from the darkness.

“Halloo-o-o-o!” said Fairway.

“Is there any cart track up across here to Mis’ess Yeobright’s, of Blooms-End?” came to them in the same voice, as a long, slim indistinct figure approached the barrow.

“Ought we not to run home as hard as we can, neighbours, as ’tis getting late?” said Christian.  “Not run away from one another, you know; run close together, I mean.”

“Scrape up a few stray locks of furze, and make a blaze, so that we can see who the man is,” said Fairway.

When the flame arose it revealed a young man in tight raiment, and red from top to toe.  “Is there a track across here to Mis’ess Yeobright’s house?” he repeated.

“Ay—­keep along the path down there.”

“I mean a way two horses and a van can travel over?”

“Well, yes; you can get up the vale below here with time.  The track is rough, but if you’ve got a light your horses may pick along wi’ care.  Have ye brought your cart far up, neighbour reddleman?”

“I’ve left it in the bottom, about half a mile back.  I stepped on in front to make sure of the way, as ’tis night-time, and I han’t been here for so long.”

“Oh, well, you can get up,” said Fairway.  “What a turn it did give me when I saw him!” he added to the whole group, the reddleman included.  “Lord’s sake, I thought, whatever fiery mommet is this come to trouble us?  No slight to your looks, reddleman, for ye bain’t bad-looking in the groundwork, though the finish is queer.  My meaning is just to say how curious I felt.  I half thought it ’twas the devil or the red ghost the boy told of.”

“It gied me a turn likewise,” said Susan Nunsuch, “for I had a dream last night of a death’s head.”

“Don’t ye talk o’t no more,” said Christian.  “If he had handkerchief over his head he’d look for all the world like the Devil in the picture of the Temptation.”

“Well, thank you for telling me,” said the young reddleman, smiling faintly.  “And good night t’ye all.”

He withdrew from their sight down the barrow.

“I fancy I’ve seen that young man’s face before,” said Humphrey.  “But where, or how, or what his name is, I don’t know.”

The reddleman had not been gone more than a few minutes when another person approached the partially revived bonfire.  It proved to be a well-known and respected widow of the neighbourhood, of a standing which can only be expressed by the word genteel.  Her face, encompassed by the blackness of the receding heath, showed whitely, and without half-lights, like a cameo.