The murmur of voices thickened, and there was no rumbling in the skittle alley to interrupt it.

Already the pile of heaped-up fagots reached above the low roof of his hut; but Carl Scheffler still continued lopping off branches, and binding fresh bundles together, almost unconscious that the sun had set, and that the labours of the day being over, the neighbouring peasants were hastening to the skittle-ground to pass away an hour in sport.