The bonfire stood in the middle of the street fronting the church. It was an octagonal pyramid, seven or eight feet high, built of dry oak and pecan limbs and logs, with straw at all the corners. The earth yet held a red horizon rim around its dusky surface. Some half-distinct swallows were swarming into the church belfry, as silent as bats; but people swarming on the ground below made a cheerful noise, like a fair. The St. John bonfire was not a religious ceremony, but its character lifted it above the ordinary burning of brushwood at night. The most dignified Kaskaskians, heretics as well as papists, came out to see it lighted; the pagan spell of Midsummer Night more or less affecting them all. Red points appeared at the pile's eight corners and sprung up flame, showing the eight lads who were bent down blowing them; showing the church front, and the steps covered with little negroes good-naturedly fighting and crowding one another off; showing the crosses of slate and wood and square marble tombs in the graveyard, and a crowd of honest faces, red kerchiefs, gray cappos, and wooden shoes pressing close around it. Children raced, shouting in the light, perpetuating unconsciously the fire-worship of Asia by leaping across outer edges of the blaze. It rose and showed the bowered homes of Kaskaskia, the tavern at an angle of the streets, with two Indians, in leggins and hunting-shirts, standing on the gallery as emotionless spectators. It illuminated fields and woods stretching southward, and little weeds beside the road whitened with dust. The roaring and crackling heat drove venturesome urchins back. Father Baby could be seen established behind a temporary counter, conveniently near the pile, yet discreetly removed from the church front. Thirsty rustics and flatboat men crowded to his kegs and clinked his glasses. The firelight shone on his crown which was bare to the sky. Father Olivier passed by, receiving submissive obeisance from the renegade, but returning him a shake of the head. Girls slipped back and forth through the church gate. Now their laughing faces grouped three or four together in the bonfire light. In a moment, when their mothers turned to follow them with the eye, they were nowhere to be seen. Perhaps outside the beacon's glare hobgoblins and fairies danced. Midsummer Night tricks and the freemasonry of youth were at work.