Fifty yards off rose the corner of the two converging banks, with the fire upon it; within the bank, lifting up to the fire one stick at a time, just as before, the figure of the little child.  She idly watched him as he occasionally climbed up in the nook of the bank and stood beside the brands.  The wind blew the smoke, and the child’s hair, and the corner of his pinafore, all in the same direction; the breeze died, and the pinafore and hair lay still, and the smoke went up straight.

While Eustacia looked on from this distance the boy’s form visibly started:  he slid down the bank and ran across towards the white gate.

“Well?” said Eustacia.

“A hop-frog have jumped into the pond.  Yes, I heard ’en!”

“Then it is going to rain, and you had better go home.  You will not be afraid?” She spoke hurriedly, as if her heart had leapt into her throat at the boy’s words.

“No, because I shall hae the crooked sixpence.”

“Yes, here it is.  Now run as fast as you can—­not that way—­through the garden here.  No other boy in the heath has had such a bonfire as yours.”

The boy, who clearly had had too much of a good thing, marched away into the shadows with alacrity.  When he was gone Eustacia, leaving her telescope and hour-glass by the gate, brushed forward from the wicket towards the angle of the bank, under the fire.

Here, screened by the outwork, she waited.  In a few moments a splash was audible from the pond outside.  Had the child been there he would have said that a second frog had jumped in; but by most people the sound would have been likened to the fall of a stone into the water.  Eustacia stepped upon the bank.

“Yes?” she said, and held her breath.

Thereupon the contour of a man became dimly visible against the low-reaching sky over the valley, beyond the outer margin of the pool.  He came round it and leapt upon the bank beside her.  A low laugh escaped her—­the third utterance which the girl had indulged in tonight.  The first, when she stood upon Rainbarrow, had expressed anxiety; the second, on the ridge, had expressed impatience; the present was one of triumphant pleasure.  She let her joyous eyes rest upon him without speaking, as upon some wondrous thing she had created out of chaos.

“I have come,” said the man, who was Wildeve.  “You give me no peace.  Why do you not leave me alone?  I have seen your bonfire all the evening.”  The words were not without emotion, and retained their level tone as if by a careful equipoise between imminent extremes.

At this unexpectedly repressing manner in her lover the girl seemed to repress herself also.  “Of course you have seen my fire,” she answered with languid calmness, artificially maintained.  “Why shouldn’t I have a bonfire on the Fifth of November, like other denizens of the heath?”

“I knew it was meant for me.”

“How did you know it?  I have had no word with you since you—­you chose her, and walked about with her, and deserted me entirely, as if I had never been yours life and soul so irretrievably!”