The single-storied, white-painted toll-house was in darkness, and the white bar-gate glimmered across the road. The dancing lanterns and the singing drew near it, and the hubbub roused the old pike-keeper, who unbarred his door and peered forth, his nightcap on his head. He had lighted a candle, and his nutcracker face showed scared in the light of it. “The Lord save us!” he said tremblingly; and then the begrimed faces of the Rebeccas, their white eyelids blinking ludicrously, swarmed at the pike. “Gate! Gate!” they bawled; “three score noblemen’s come to pay their gatecloys!” and one fellow shouted: “If thou wants to save thy bits o’ sticks, owd man, out wi’ ’em into th’ road!” “My garden! My garden!” the old man whimpered. “Dinna walk ower my garden!” They laughed. He was thrust aside, and a dozen men climbed the gate and poured into the toll-house. They began to strip walls, to tear up matting, to bundle out bed and bedding, tables and chairs, and pans, and crockery. Others set faggots against the bar-gate, the wooden window-shuts, and the fuel-shed at the back of the house; and the old man sat among his chattels in the road and moaned: “My garden, my garden!” Soon every faggot was disposed, and the men stood round. “Ready?” they cried; and fire was laid to the twigs and faggots in a dozen places at once. * * * * * “Listen!” said Bessie Wyatt fearfully; “I’m sure there’s wheels at th’ back o’ us, Harry--I ha’ heard ’em this half-hour!” “Ay, I hear ’em,” Harry replied grimly; “but th’ mare’s doin’ th’ best she can, an’ it’s what’s afore us that’s troublin’ me, sitha!” She caught her breath. “Yon’s never th’ dawn, Harry!” “Not wi’out th’ dawn’s come i’ th’ north for once,” he muttered. “Come up, then, Polly!” The mare sprang more quickly forward at the trailing of the whiplash over her quarters, and the dark hedges made a long blur on either hand. The odd brightness rose and sank over the distant fell. “Rebecca afore, an’ th’ father ahint,” he said to himself, “an’ we canna hide th’ trap; we maun chance it. Come up, Polly!--Hark!--Ay, yon’s Beeswing; I ken her trot; thou canna leave Beeswing, Polly, poor lass; we can but go forrard. Polly’s my own, but I ha’ borrowed th’ trap. Come closer, Bess.” “Oh, Harry, ha’ a care; we were a’most i’ th’ dike then! Sitha, how th’ hills swing!--Yon leet’s growin’ breeter.” “We’se see at th’ next turn,” he said between his teeth. “Ho’d me close.”