When dinner was over, the Miss Robertsons sent out for the hired coach and pair which they had considered indispensable to the occasion. When they had taken their leave, Gilbert stood and watched the lights of the vehicle disappearing down the road to Kaims. Their departure relieved him, for their presence made him dislike Barclay. Their extreme simplicity might border on the absurd, but it made the lawyer’s exaggerated politenesses and well-to-do complacency look more offensive than they actually were. It was quite dark as he turned back, and Barclay, who was a man much in request in his own circle, was anxious to get home to the town, where he proposed to enjoy a bottle with some friends. He looked forward keenly to discussing the new-comer over it. Before he went to bed, Speid strolled out into the damp night. He set his face towards the sea, and the small stir of air there was blew chill upon his cheek. Beyond a couple of fields a great light was flaring, throwing up the blunt end of some farm buildings through which he had passed that morning in his walk with Barclay. Figures were flitting across the shine; and the hum of human voices rose above a faint roar that was coming in from the waste of sea beyond the sand-hills. He strode across the paling, and made towards the light. When he reached the place he found that a bonfire was shooting bravely upward, and the glow which it threw on the walls of the whitewashed dwelling-house was turning it into a rosy pink. The black forms of twenty or thirty persons, men and women--the former much in the majority--were crowding and gyrating round the blaze. Some were feeding it with logs and stacks of brushwood; a few of the younger ones were dancing and posturing solemnly; and one, who had made a discreet retirement from the burning mass, was sitting in an open doorway with an empty bottle on the threshold beside him. Some children looked down on the throng from an upper window of the house. The revel was apparently in an advanced stage. The noise was tremendous. Under cover of it, and of the deep shadows thrown by the bonfire, Gilbert slipped into a dark angle and stood to watch the scene. The men were the principal dancers, and a knot of heavy carter-lads were shuffling opposite to each other in a kind of sentimental abandonment. Each had one hand on his hip and one held conscientiously aloft. Now and then they turned round with the slow motion of joints on the spit. One was singing gutturally in time to his feet; but his words were unintelligible to Speid. He soon discovered that the rejoicings were in honour of his own arrival and the knowledge made him the more inclined to keep his hiding-place. He could see Macquean raking at the pile, the flame playing over his round forehead and unrefined face. He looked greatly unsuited to the occasion, as he did to any outdoor event. All at once a little wizened woman looked in his own direction.