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.

People watched one another across that pile with diverse aims. Rice
Jones had his sister on his arm, wrapped in a Spanish mantilla. Her tiny
face, with a rose above one ear, was startling against this black
setting. They stood near Father Baby's booth; and while Peggy Morrison
waited at the church gate to signal Maria, she resented Rice Jones's
habitual indifference to her existence. He saw Angélique Saucier beside
her mother, and the men gathering to her, among them an officer from
Fort Chartres. They troubled him little; for he intended in due time to
put these fellows all out of his way. There were other matters as vital
to Rice Jones. Young Pierre Menard hovered vainly about him. The moment
Maria left him a squad of country politicians surrounded their political
leader, and he did some effectual work for his party by the light of the
St. John fire.

Darkness grew outside the irregular radiance of that pile, and the night
concert of insects could be heard as an interlude between children's
shouts and the hum of voices. Peggy Morrison's lifted finger caught
Maria's glance. It was an imperative gesture, meaning haste and secrecy,
and separation from her brother Rice. Maria laughed and shook her head
wistfully. The girlish pastimes of Midsummer Night were all done for
her. She thought of nights in her own wild county of Merionethshire,
when she had run, palpitating like a hare, to try some spell or charm
which might reveal the future to her; and now it was revealed.

An apparition from the other hemisphere came upon her that instant. She