the bogey their mothers had used to frighten them with; and, nodding together, the four heads coming closer, whisper that Nicholas Lovel had all the black arts at his disposal, and had in a fit of rage put a curse upon his own brother, so that the lad no longer had his wits about him, but loitered around, the anxiety and disgrace of the village. They had the whole day to themselves, in which to say over and over again the things they had said many times before, and, greedy, would have liked to have the evening too, but far from it, the evening of that day was worse than any other evening, for the young men returned, already uproarious and in their numbers, full of song and boastfulness, their boots white with the chalk of the Downs, and their broad hats stuck round with the grasses and sorrel that grew up there on those unfertile heights. The old men would collect together in a corner, remotely grumbling, watching the young men as they lounged against the bar, filling the tap-room with their ribald good-humour and their tobacco smoke. The old men disapproved of the young because they feared in them the jostle of the oncoming generation, but the young men merely laughed carelessly at the old, having from them no longer anything to fear. The young men, on the evening of that particular day, would be more than usually vainglorious, bragging of their exploits, growing with every glass more direct in their modes of expression and more hilarious in their laughter. It was the day when all prudery was thrown aside, when each girl must look after herself as best she could or would, when from the earliest hour of exodus from the village along the road to the Downs the band of youths and girls fell into two primitive groups of hunter and quarry, a scramble of catch-who-catch-can, an escapade of wholesome license over the slopes of the Downs. It is true that they started out armed with trowels and rakes, but even these implements of homely design were soon garlanded with vetch and campion torn from the hedgerows as the party went along, nor were these, the ostensible justification of the expedition, the true weapons of the day; the true weapons were the muslin frocks, the black shoes and white stockings, the ribbons, the sunbonnets, and the eyes and curls beneath the sunbonnets; and the leather leggings of the young men, their strong brown hands, their belted smocks, their insolent air. Impossible that a few wounds should not result from the marshalling of such an armoury. And while the girls on their return must needs carry away to their bedrooms the secrets of the day, evading the inquisitive eye of their mothers, who, not condescending to ask, although burning to know, remembered with a sigh similar feasts of their own youth, the young men might gather in the tap-room and between hints and guffaws convey to all who cared to hear that they were fine young men worthy of their sex and of a sound country tradition. It was perhaps