Page:Walpole--portrait of man with red hair.djvu/110

 together so. Something anxious and longing in the human heart was rising, free and strong, that night, and would never again entirely leave some of the hearts that knew it.

Harkness for one. There were to be many years in the future when he was to feel again the beating of Gideon's heart under his arm. Something of Gideon's was his, and something of his was Gideon's forevermore, though they would never meet again.

And now the procession was arranged. Harkness looking back could see how it stretched, a winding serpent black in the shadows of the leaping bonfire, through the square. They were off again. The drum had started. Down the hill they went, all packed together, all swinging with the tune. A kind of divine frenzy united them all. Young and old, men and women, married and single, good and evil, vicious and virtuous, all were together bound in one chain. Harkness was with them. For the first time in all his life restraint was flung aside. He did not smell the beer nor did the sweat of the perspiring bodies offend his sensitive nostrils, nor the dung from the fields, nor the fishy odours of the sea. With Gideon on one side and a young man's girl on the other, he swung through the town.

Details for a time eluded him. He was singing the song at the top of his voice, but what words he