test her spirit of endurance,
when, driving up the higher heath-land, we saw the dark sky ominously
reddened over Riversley, and, mounting the ridge, had the funeral flames
of the old Grange dashed in our faces. The blow was evil, sudden,
unaccountable. Villagers, tenants, farm-labourers, groups of a deputation
that had gone to the railway station to give us welcome; and returned,
owing to a delay in our arrival, stood gazing from all quarters. The
Grange was burning in two great wings, that soared in flame-tips and
columns of crimson smoke, leaving the central hall and chambers untouched
as yet, but alive inside with mysterious ranges of lights, now curtained,
now made bare--a feeble contrast to the savage blaze to right and left,
save for the wonder aroused as to its significance. These were soon
cloaked. Dead sable reigned in them, and at once a jet of flame gave the
whole vast building to destruction. My wife thrust her hand in mine. Fire
at the heart, fire at the wings--our old home stood in that majesty of
horror which freezes the limbs of men, bidding them look and no more.

'What has Riversley done to deserve this?' I heard Janet murmur to
herself. 'His room!' she said, when at the South-east wing, where my old
grandfather had slept, there burst a glut of flame. We dove down to the
park and along the carriage-road to the first red line of gazers. They
told us that no living creatures were in the house. My aunt Dorothy was
at Bulsted. I perceived my father's man Tollingby among the servants, and
called him to me; others came, and out of a clatter of tongues, and all
eyes fearfully askant at the wall of fire, we gathered that a great
reception had been prepared for us by my father: lamps, lights in all the
rooms, torches in the hall, illuminations along the windows, stores of
fireworks, such a display as only he could have dreamed of. The fire had
broken out at dusk, from an explosion of fireworks at one wing and some
inexplicable mismanagement at the other. But the house must have been
like a mine, what with the powder, the torches, the devices in paper and
muslin, and the extraordinary decorations fitted up to celebrate our
return in harmony with my father's fancy.

Gentlemen on horseback dashed up to us. Captain Bulsted seized my hand.
He was hot from a ride to fetch engines, and sang sharp in my ear, 'Have
you got him?' It was my father he meant. The cry rose for my father, and
the groups were agitated and spl