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The setting moon showed no more than half her shape over the crest of Litton Wood, and the old grey stone village under the Brow was lost in night. No sound broke the profound stillness of the Dale, not so much as the rustle of a stalled beast nor the moving of a bird in its nest; and the Bear lay low over the dark fell across the valley. The single stroke of a bell broke from the church belfry, pealed, spread away and failed over the Dale as ripples spread over a still pond; and the silence closed in again.
A faint confused noise, a mile and more away, arose, hardly audible at first. Slowly the noise drew nearer, and snatches of singing could be heard, and a dull thumping on a drum or tub. As it swelled and drew still nearer a light appeared in an upper window, and a man’s head was pushed forth from the casement. Candles showed in other windows; more heads appeared; single voices could now be distinguished in the approaching hubbub; and a street door was thrown open and a man in his shirt and trousers shouted: “Th’ Rebeccas!”
In ten minutes three-score men had swarmed up the village street.
You would hardly have known they were men save by their voices. Their faces were hideously smeared with soot, all but their eyelids, which showed grotesquely white when they blinked. They wore the petticoats of women, gaping, fastened with belts or hitched up with string, and they carried lighted lanterns. Half of them bore faggots on their shoulders, other brooms of rush and twig. They thumped on tubs, sang doggerel songs, and whooped up at windows; and at the clamour they made many of the Litton folk retired within their houses, barring the doors and watching the commotion from the windows.
“Mun t’ poor mak rooads for t’ rich to use?” a voice bawled; and in a kind of droning singsong came a chorus of “Sweep, Rebecca, Sweep!”
Their feet caught in their skirts as they capered, and some had rolled their petticoats about their waists, showing their men’s legs beneath. Some had shawls tied over their head, others bonnets; and they lighted pipes at the lanterns. A big fellow demanded the name of the toll-keeper.
“’Tis Matthy Lee, an owd man,” a piping voice replied. “What gars Rebecca sweep so far fro’ hame?”
“Shoo’ll sweep fro’ here to London Town afore shoo sets t’ broom back i’ t’ corner.—I wish there were more wind; a bit o’ breeze mak’s a merry sweepin’.”
“Eh, all’s as dry as kin’lin’-wood this weather. Which is t’ road?”