Down the centre of the Square were rows of booths lighted by gas-jets that flamed and flared in the night-air with the hiss of many serpents. These filled the middle line of the market. To the right was the round-about; its circle of lights wheeling madly round and round gave it the vitality of a living thing—some huge Leviathan on wheels bawling discordantly the latest triumph of the Halls, and then, excited by its voice, whirling ever swifter and swifter as though it would hurl itself into the air and go rioting gaily through the market, and then suddenly dropping, dead, exhausted, melancholy at the ceasing of its song:— Put me amongst the—girls! Those wi-th the curly curls! and then a sudden vision of dark figures leaping up and down into the light and out of it again, the wild waving of an arm, and the red, green and yellow of the horses as they swirled up and down and round to the tune. In another corner, standing on a plank laid upon two barrels, his arms raised fantastically above his head, was a preacher. Around him was gathered a small circle of persons with books, and faintly, through the noise of the merry-go-round and the cries of those that bought and sold, came the shrill, wavering scream of a hymn:— So like little candles We shall shine, You in your small corner And I in mine. Down the central alley passed crowds of men and women, sailors and their sweethearts, for the most part; and strangely foreign looking a great many of them were—brown and swarthy, with black curling hair and dark, flashing eyes. There were many country people wearing their Sunday clothes with an uneasiness that had also something of admitted virtue and pride about it. Their ill-fitting and absurdly self-conscious garments hung about them and confined their movements; they watched the scene around them almost furtively, and with a certain subdued terror. It was the day, the night of the year to them; it had been looked forward to and counted and solemnised with the dignity of a much-be-thumbed calendar, and through the long dreary days of winter, when snow and the blinding mist hemmed in solitary farms with desolation, it had been anticipated and foreseen with eager intensity. Now that it was here and was so soon to stand, a lonely pillar in the utterly uneventful waste-land of the year, they looked at it timorously, fearfully, and yet with eager excitement. These lights, this noise, this crowd, how wonderful to look back upon it all afterwards, and how perilous it all was! They moved carefully through the line of booths, wondering at the splendour and magnificence of them, buying a little once or twice, and then repenting of what they had done. Another hour and it would be over; already they shuddered at the blackness of to-morrow.