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eccentric satellite to the dance was “Crack,” the Hobby-Horse, with Wing-Commander Begg inside him. “Crack” had been hammered out at Copse Forge, how many centuries ago none of the dancers could tell. His iron head, more bird-like than equine, was daubed with paint after the fashion of a witch-doctor’s mask. It appeared through a great, flat, drum-like body: a circular frame that was covered to the ground with canvas and had a tiny horsehair tail stuck through it. “Crack” snapped his iron jaws and executed a solo dance of some intricacy.
    Presently Ralph Stayne came in, shaking the snow off his hat and coat. He stood watching for a minute or two and then went to a corner of the barn where he found, and put on, a battered crinoline-like skirt. It was enormously wide and reached to the floor.
    Now, in the character of man-woman, and wearing a face of thunder, Ralph, too, began to skip and march about in the Dance of the Five Sons. They had formed the Knot, or Glass — an emblem made by the interlacing of their swords. Dan and Andy displayed it, the Guiser approached, seemed to look in it at his reflection and then dashed it to the ground. The dance was repeated and the knot reformed. The Guiser mimed, with clumsy and rudimentary gestures, an appeal to the clemency of the Sons. He appeared to write and show his Will, promising this to one and that to another. They seemed to be mollified. A third time they danced and formed their knot. Now, mimed old William, there is no escape. He put his head in the knot. The swords were disengaged with a clash. He dropped his rabbit cap and fell to the ground.
    Dr. Otterly lowered his fiddle.
    “Sorry,” he said. “I must be off. Quite enough anyway for you, Guiser. If I knew my duty I wouldn’t let you do it at all. Look at you, you old fool, puffing like your own bellows. There’s no need, what’s more, for you to extend yourself like that. Yours is not strictly a dancing role. Now, don’t go on after I’ve left. Sit down and play for the others if you like. Here’s the fiddle. But no more dancing. Understand? ’Night, boys.”
    He shrugged himself into his coat and went out. They heard him drive away.
    Ernie practiced “whiffling.” He executed great leaps, slashing with his sword at imaginary enemies and making a little boy’s spaceman noise between his teeth. The Hobby-Horse performed an extraordinary and rather alarming antic which turned out merely to be the preparatory manoeuvre of Simon Begg divesting himself of his trappings.
    “Damned if I put this bloody harness on again to-night,” he said. “It cuts my shoulders and it stinks.”
    “So does the Betty,” said Ralph. “They must have been great sweaters, our predecessors. However,
toujours l’art
, I suppose.”
    “Anything against having them washed, Guiser?” asked Begg.
    “You can’t wash Old ’Oss,” the Guiser pointed out. “Polish iron and leather and hop up your pail of pitch. Dip ‘Crack’s’ skirt into it last thing as is what is proper and right. Nothin’ like hot pitch to smell.”
    “True,” Ralph said, “you have the advantage of me, Begg. I can’t turn the Betty into a tar-baby, worse luck.”
    Begg said, “I’d almost forgotten the hot pitch. Queer sort of caper when you come to think of it. Chasing the lovely ladies and dabbing hot tar on ’em. Funny thing is, they don’t run away as fast as all that, either.”
    “Padstow ’Oss,” observed Chris, “or so I’ve ’eard tell, catches ’em up and overlays ’em like a candle-snuff.”
    “ ’Eathen licentiousness,” rejoined his father, “and no gear for us chaps, so doan’t you think of trying it on, Simmy-Dick.”
    “Guiser,” Ralph said, “you’re superb. Isn’t the whole thing heathen?”
    “No, it bean’t, then. It’s right and proper when it’s done proper and proper-done by us it’s going to be.”
    “All the same,” Simon Begg said, “I wouldn’t mind twenty seconds under the old tar