"What on earth is Nicky Nan Night?" asked Merle rather crossly, but nobody troubled to answer, so she struggled into her coat and joined Mavis, who was waiting at the door, and forgot all about the matter directly. Later on in the evening, however, she began to understand. Durracombe was a little old-world place, and had preserved many quaint and curious customs from ancient times. One of the most extraordinary of these was a kind of carnival held by the boys of the town at the beginning of the season of Lent. As soon as it was dusk they commenced to prowl about the streets wearing black paper masks and carrying turnip lanterns. They were supposed to represent imps of darkness, or perhaps will o' the wisps, and their chief sport was to ring door bells, or rat-tap with knockers, and then run away. Mavis and Merle, hearing repeated peals from the surgery bell, were amazed that Jessop did not answer it, till she explained it was merely a ruse of the Nicky Nans, and that nobody in Durracombe who knew their tricks would respond to such a summons. She offered however to take the girls out for ten minutes to look at the fun; so they donned coats and scarves and issued into the dim High Street. It was a moonless night, which made things all the better for such a saturnalia. In the distance a cluster of lights began to dance about, and presently up ran half a dozen little urchins, disguised in masks and waving turnip lanterns pierced with holes for eyes and mouths, so that the candles shining through them gave them the appearance of gruesome goblins. The children had indeed vied with one another as to which could produce the most horrible looking turnip head, and part of the sport was to hide in dark alleys and suddenly to exhibit the lanterns to unwary passers-by, to try to raise a scream. The small imps careered round and round, prancing and giving an occasional yell of "Nicky Nan". The girls laughed in much amusement, and Jessop, who had witnessed the custom from her youth up, felt in her pocket for some pennies, and threw them into the road to be scrambled for.