"You're a queer lad, Reubenand more masterful than your poor f?ather wur.""Or that Meryon has given us, which is saying more," put in someone else.She began to knock, first softly, then more desperately. She must get in. Nothing was to be heard except her own despairing dinthe house seemed plunged in[Pg 316] sleep. Rose's fear grew, spread black bat's wings, and darkened all her thoughtsfor she knew that someone must have heard her, she could not make all this racket quite unheard.
ONE:"Realf of Grandturzel has got his bit all safe.""Reckon I can," said Albert good-naturedly, knowing that some day he might want his brother to do the same for him.
ONE:"Well, that's very niceI don't always want to go somewhere every time I take a walk, I much prefer just wandering."Again the monk looked stern, and strove to loosen her hold, but she held with too firm a grasp to be shaken off, and the trembling diffidence of her speech changed into the eager and fervent supplication of one who would not be denied.
TWO:"Bring a light!" called someone. A boy dashed up with a handful of flaming strawit blew out of his hand and flared away over the roof, scattering showers of sparks. A man yelled out that his shirt was burning. "Bring a light!" someone called again. Then someone else shouted"The constables from Rye!"
THREE:The engine set to work, and soon everything that had not been destroyed by fire was destroyed by water. But the flames were beaten. They hissed and blackened into smoke. When dawn broke over the eastern shoulder of Boarzell, the fire was out. A rasping pungent smell rose from a wreckage of black walls and little smoking piles of what looked like black rags. Water poured off the gutters of the house, and soused still further the pile of furniture and bedding that had been pulled hastily out of it. The farm men gathered round the buckets, to drink, and to wash their smoke-grimed skins. Reuben talked over the disaster with the head of the fire brigade, who endorsed his opinion of spontaneous combustion; and Realf of Grandturzel sat on a heap of ashesand sobbed.
