was red like the rest of him. Moreover, as he darned he smoked a pipe, the stem and bowl of which were red also.

At this moment one of the heath-croppers feeding in the outer shadows was audibly shaking off the clog attached to its foot. Aroused by the sound, the reddleman laid down his stocking, lit a lantern which hung beside him, and came out from the van. In sticking up the candle, he lifted the lantern to his face, and the light shone into the whites of his eyes, and upon his ivory teeth, which, in contrast with the red surrounding, lent him a startling aspect.

This was enough to make the boy shudder. He knew too well for his peace of mind upon whose lair he had lighted. Uglier persons than gipsies were known to cross Egdon at times, and a reddleman was one of them.

'How I wish 'twas only a gipsy!' he murmured.

The man was by this time coming back from the horses. In his fear of being seen, the boy rendered detection certain by nervous motion. The heather and peat stratum overhung the brow of the pit in mats, hiding the actual verge. The boy had stepped beyond the solid ground; the heather now gave way, and down he rolled over the scarp of grey sand to the very foot of the man.

The red man opened the lantern, and turned it upon the figure of the prostrate boy.

"Who be ye?' he said.

'Johnny Nunsuch, master.'

"What were you doing up there?'

'I don't know.'

"Watching me, I suppose.'

"Yes, master.'

"What did you watch me for?'

'Because I was coming home from Miss Vye's bonfire.'

'Beest hurt?'

'No.'

'Why, yes, you be: your hand is bleeding. Come under my tilt and let me tie it up.'

'Please let me look for my sixpence.'

'How did you come by that?'

'Miss Vye gied it to me for keeping up her bonfire.'

The sixpence was found, and the man went to the van, the boy behind, almost holding his breath.

The man took a piece of rag from a satchel containing sewing materials, tore off a strip, which like everything else was tinged red, and proceeded to bind up the wound.

My eyes have got foggy-like-please may I sit down, master?' said the boy.

To be sure, poor chap! 'Tis enough to make you feel fainty. Sit on that bundle.'

The man finished tying up the gash, and the boy said, 'I think I'll go home now, master.'

'You are rather afraid of me. Do you know what I be?'

The child surveyed his vermilion figure up and down with much misgiving, and finally said, 'Yes.'

'Well, what?'

'The reddleman!' he faltered.

You

'Yes, that's what I be. Though there's more than one. little children think there's only one cuckoo, one fox, one giant, one devil, and one reddleman, when there's lots of us all.'

Is there? You won't carry me off in your bags, will ye, master? 'Tis said that the reddleman will sometimes.'

'Nonsense! All that reddlemen do is sell reddle. You see all these bags at the back of my cart? They are not full of little boys-only full of red stuff.'

6 Was you born a reddleman ?'

'No, I took to it. I should be as white as you if I was to give up the trade—that is, I should be white in time, perhaps six months not at first, because 'tis growed into my skin and won't wash out. Now you'll never be afraid of a reddleman again, will ye?' 'No, never. Willy Orchard said he seed a red ghost here t'other day-perhaps that was you?'

'I was here t'other day.'

'Were you making that dusty light I saw by now?' 'O yes: I was beating out some bags.

good bonfire up there? I saw the light. a bonfire so bad that she should give you

And have you had a

Why did Miss Vye want sixpence to keep it up?'

'I don't know. I was tired, but she made me bide and keep up the fire just the same, while she kept going up across Blackbarrow way.

And how long did that last?'

'Until a hopfrog jumped into the pond.'

The reddleman suddenly ceased to talk idly. A hopfrog? he inquired. Hopfrogs don't jump into ponds this time of year.' "They do, for I heard one.'

"Certain-sure?'

"Yes. She told me afore that I should hear'n; and so I did. They say she's clever and deep, and perhaps she charmed 'en to come.' And what then?'

Then I came down here, and I was afraid, and I went back, but I didn't like to speak to her because of the gentleman, and I came on here again.'

"A gentleman-ah! What did she say to him, my man?' 'Told him she supposed he had not married the other woman because he liked his old sweetheart best; and things like that."

"What did the gentleman say to her, my sonny?'

'He only said he did like her best, and how he was coming to see her again under Blackbarrow o' nights.'

6

'Ha!' cried the reddleman, slapping his hand against the side of his van so that the whole fabric shook under the blow. That's the secret o't!'

The little boy jumped clean from the stool.

'My man, don't you be afraid,' said the dealer in red, suddenly becoming gentle. I forgot you were here. That's only a curious way reddlemen have of going mad for a moment; but they don't hurt anybody. And what did the lady say then?'

I can't mind. Please, Master Reddleman, may I go homealong now?'

6

Ay, to be sure you may. I'll go a bit of ways with you.'

He conducted the boy out of the gravel-pit and into the path leading to his mother's cottage. When the little figure had vanished in the darkness, the reddleman returned, resumed his seat by the fire, and proceeded to darn again.

CHAPTER IX.

LOVE LEADS A SHREWD MAN INTO STRATEGY.

REDDLEMEN of the old school are now but seldom seen. Since the introduction of railways, Wessex farmers have managed to do without these somewhat spectral visitants, and the bright pigment so largely used by shepherds in preparing sheep for the fair is obtained by other routes. Even those who yet survive have lost the poetry of existence which characterised them when the pursuit of the trade meant periodical journeys to the pit whence the material was dug, a regular camping out from month to month except in the depth of winter, a peregrination among farms which could be counted by the hundred, and, in spite of this Arab existence, the preservation of that respectability which is ensured by the neverfailing production of a well-lined purse.

Reddle spreads its lively hues over everything it lights on, and stamps unmistakably, as with the mark of Cain, any person who has handled it half-an-hour.

A child's first sight of a reddleman was an epoch in his life. That blood-coloured figure was a sublimation of all the horrid dreams which had afflicted the juvenile spirit since imagination began. The reddleman is coming for you!' had been the formu

lated threat of Wessex mothers for many generations. He was successfully supplanted for a while, at the beginning of the present century, by Bonaparte; but as process of time rendered the latter personage stale and ineffective, the older phrase resumed its early prominence. And now the reddleman has in his turn followed Bonaparte to the land of worn-out bogeys, and his place is filled by modern inventions.

The reddleman lived like a gipsy; but gipsies he scorned. He was about as thriving as travelling basket- and mat-makers; but he had nothing to do with them. He was as decently born and brought up as the cattle-drovers who passed and repassed him in his wanderings; but they merely nodded to him. His stock was more valuable than that of pedlars; but they did not think so, and passed his cart with eyes straight ahead. He was such a fearfully unnatural colour to look at, that the men of round-abouts and wax-work shows seemed gentlemen beside him; but he considered them low company, and remained aloof. Among all these squatters and folks of the road the reddleman continually found himself; yet he was not of them. His occupation tended to isolate him, and isolated he was mostly seen to be.

It was sometimes suggested that reddlemen were criminals for whose misdeeds other men had wrongfully suffered that in escaping the law they had not escaped their own consciences, and had taken to the trade as a life-long penance. Else why should they have chosen it? The necessity for reddlemen was not nearly so obvious as the necessity for sweeps; yet the red business, apart from its more lively hue in the landscape, was scarcely to be preferred to the black.

In the present case such a question would have been particularly apposite. The reddleman who had entered Egdon that afternoon was an instance of the pleasing being wasted to form the groundwork of the singular, when an ugly foundation would have done just as well for that purpose. The one point that was forbidding about this reddleman was his colour. Freed from that, he would have been as agreeable a specimen of rustic manhood as one should often see. After looking at him, one would have hazarded the guess that good-nature, and an acuteness as extreme as it could be without verging on craft, formed the framework of his character.

While he darned the stocking, his face became rigid with thought. Softer expressions followed this, and then again recurred the tender sadness which had sat upon him during his drive along the highway that afternoon. Presently his needle stopped. He laid down the stocking, arose from his seat, and took a leathern

pouch from a hook in the corner of the van. This contained, among other articles, a brown-paper packet which, to judge from the hinge-like character of its worn folds, seemed to have been carefully opened and closed a good many times. He sat down on the three-legged milking-stool that formed the only seat in the van, and examining his packet by the light of a candle took thence an old letter, and spread it open. The writing had originally been traced on white paper, but the letter had now assumed a pale red tinge from the accident of its situation: and the black strokes of writing thereon looked like the twigs of a winter hedge against a vermilion sunset. The letter bore a date some two years previous to that time, and was signed Thomasin Yeobright.' It ran as follows:

DEAR DIGGORY VENN,--The question you put when you overtook me coming home from Pond-close gave me such a surprise that I am afraid I did not make you exactly understand what I meant. Of course, if my aunt had not met me, I could have explained all then at once, but as it was there was no chance. I have been quite uneasy since, as you know I do not wish to pain you, yet I fear I shall be doing so now in contradicting what I seemed to say then. I cannot, Diggory, marry you, or think of letting you call me your sweetheart. I could not, indeed, Diggory. I hope you will not much mind my saying this, and feel it as great pain. It makes me very sad when I think it may, for I like you very much, and I always put you next to my cousin Clym in my mind. There are so many reasons why we cannot be married, that I can hardly name them all in a letter. I did not in the least expect that you were going to speak on such a thing when you followed me, because I had never thought of you in the sense of a lover at all. You must not becall me for laughing when you spoke; you mistook when you thought I laughed at you as a foolish man. I laughed because the idea was so odd, and not at you at all. The great reason with my own personal self for not letting you court me is, that I do not feel the things a woman ought to feel who consents to walk with you with the meaning of being your wife. It is not as you think, that I have another in my mind, for I do not encourage anybody, and never have in my life. Another reason is my aunt. She would not, I know, agree to it, even if I wished to have you. She likes you very well, but she will want me to look a little higher. I do not mean that a haulier's is not a very good calling, but aunt would be at me about it, and perhaps be angry. I hope you will not set your heart against me for writing plainly, but I felt you might try to see me again, and it is better that we should not meet. I shall always think of you as a good man, and be anxious for your well-doing. I send this by Jane Orchard's little maid,

And remain, Diggory,
Your faithful friend,
THOMASIN YEOBRIGHT.

Since the arrival of that letter on a certain autumn morning long ago, the reddleman and Thomasin had not met till to-day. During the interval he had shifted his position even further to the worse in the eyes of the stationary dwellers upon Egdon, by adopting the reddle trade; though he was really better in circumstances.