Pagina 590 de 896

They rested on some straw in a loft until the middle of the

night, and then rode forward again when all the town was asleep.

Among the many wild changes observable on familiar things which

made this wild ride unreal, not the least was the seeming rarity

of sleep. After long and lonely spurring over dreary roads, they

would come to a cluster of poor cottages, not steeped in

darkness, but all glittering with lights, and would find the

people, in a ghostly manner in the dead of the night, circling

hand in hand round a shrivelled tree of Liberty, or all drawn up

together singing a Liberty song.