“Was it quite safe when the winder shook?” Christian inquired.

He received no answer, all for the moment sitting rapt in admiration of the performance described.  As with Farinelli’s singing before the princesses, Sheridan’s renowned Begum Speech, and other such examples, the fortunate condition of its being for ever lost to the world invested the deceased Mr. Yeobright’s tour de force on that memorable afternoon with a cumulative glory which comparative criticism, had that been possible, might considerably have shorn down.

“He was the last you’d have expected to drop off in the prime of life,” said Humphrey.

“Ah, well:  he was looking for the earth some months afore he went.  At that time women used to run for smocks and gown-pieces at Greenhill Fair, and my wife that is now, being a long-legged slittering maid, hardly husband-high, went with the rest of the maidens, for ’a was a good runner afore she got so heavy.  When she came home I said—­we were then just beginning to walk together—­’What have ye got, my honey?’ ‘I’ve won—­well, I’ve won—­a gown-piece,’ says she, her colours coming up in a moment.  ’Tis a smock for a crown, I thought; and so it turned out.  Ay, when I think what she’ll say to me now without a mossel of red in her face, it do seem strange that ’a wouldn’t say such a little thing then...  However, then she went on, and that’s what made me bring up the story.  ’Well, whatever clothes I’ve won, white or figured, for eyes to see or for eyes not to see’ (’a could do a pretty stroke of modesty in those days), ’I’d sooner have lost it than have seen what I have.  Poor Mr. Yeobright was took bad directly he reached the fair ground, and was forced to go home again.’  That was the last time he ever went out of the parish.”

“’A faltered on from one day to another, and then we heard he was gone.”

“D’ye think he had great pain when ’a died?” said Christian.

“O no:  quite different.  Nor any pain of mind.  He was lucky enough to be God A’mighty’s own man.”

“And other folk—­d’ye think ’twill be much pain to ’em, Mister Fairway?”

“That depends on whether they be afeard.”

“I bain’t afeard at all, I thank God!” said Christian strenuously.  “I’m glad I bain’t, for then ’twon’t pain me...  I don’t think I be afeard—­or if I be I can’t help it, and I don’t deserve to suffer.  I wish I was not afeard at all!”

There was a solemn silence, and looking from the window, which was unshuttered and unblinded, Timothy said, “Well, what a fess little bonfire that one is, out by Cap’n Vye’s!  ’Tis burning just the same now as ever, upon my life.”

All glances went through the window, and nobody noticed that Wildeve disguised a brief, telltale look.  Far away up the sombre valley of heath, and to the right of Rainbarrow, could indeed be seen the light, small, but steady and persistent as before.

“It was lighted before ours was,” Fairway continued; “and yet every one in the country round is out afore ’n.”