It was as though Mother Earth had, with a heave of her breast, tossed these shadowy forms into the air and was herself stirring with the emotion of their movement.
There was an instant's breathless silence; to the roar of a shouting multitude a bright hard flame shot like steel into the air--the bonfire was alight.
Now with every moment it mounted higher.

Black pigmy figures were now dancing round it and across the Common other figures were always passing, dragging wood with them.

The row of palings towards the river had gone and soon those little cottages that lined the grass must suffer.

Surely now the whole of the University was gathered there! The crowd was close now, dense--men shoved past one another crying out excited cries, waving their arms with strange meaningless gestures.

They were arriving rapidly at that condition when they had neither names nor addresses but merely impulses.
Most dangerous element of all threatened that ring of loafers on the outskirts--loafers from the town.