In the gloaming they lit tallow candles set in beer bottles in the dancing tent, and to the tune of an old cracked fiddle everybody had a turn on the sod with everybody else. If there were classes and distinctions in the Old Town, there were none out there. The Bishop’s wife or the Rector’s daughter danced with the shoemaker’s lad and had a good time. The old ferry raft that was pulled from shore to shore with a rope, plied back and forth over the river, carrying great loads of hay one way, and bigger and bigger loads of merry-makers from the town, for those were the midsummer nights when nobody kept account of time. That was the Old Town’s real holiday. It came to an end with the third Sunday, I think it was, in July, after which the cattle were turned in to graze on the Holme and the herdsman was left in sole possession; by no means a sinecure, for soon the North Sea gave warning that at any moment his life and the safety of his charges might be at stake, if they were outstripped in the race with the angry floods. [Illustration: IN HOLME WEEK--THE OLD FERRY RAFT.] But while the sea yet slumbered in summer sunshine we boys had our shore days, and they were fine. Then we arose with the sun and walked the four miles to the beach, which thereabouts is very flat and wide. When the tide is out, there is a stretch of quite half a mile of white sand to deep water. Over this the flood tide comes stealing in so stealthily, yet so swiftly, that it takes a pretty good runner to get to the land without very wet feet or worse, if he is caught far out by the turn of the tide. We would sometimes bring home quite a store of amber from these trips, and then little files would be busy for days making hearts, sabots, and other trinkets for the girl each boy liked best. Hearts were the most popular and also the easiest to fashion. We made those things ourselves, and it was a sort of manual training not to be despised.