tongues of flame against the sunlight.

"God bless me!" he gasped, and in sheer horror started to run again.
Those sinister tongues were licking at the air over a large barn, some
ricks, and the roofs of stables and outbuildings. Half a dozen figures
were dashing buckets of water on the flames. The true insignificance of
their efforts did not penetrate the Squire's mind. Trembling, and with a
sickening pain in his lungs, he threw off his coat, wrenched a bucket
from a huge agricultural labourer, who resigned it with awe, and joined
the string of workers. Peacock, the farmer, ran past him; his face and
round red beard were the colour of the flames he was trying to put out;
tears dropped continually from his eyes and ran down that fiery face.
His wife, a little dark woman with a twisted mouth, was working like a
demon at the pump. Mr. Pendyce gasped to her:

"This is dreadful, Mrs. Peacock--this is dreadful!"

Conspicuous in black clothes and white shirt-sleeves, the Rector was
hewing with an axe at the boarding of a cowhouse, the door end of which
was already in flames, and his voice could be heard above the tumult
shouting directions to which nobody paid any heed.

"What's in that cow-house?" gasped Mr. Pendyce.

Mrs. Peacock, in a voice harsh with rage and grief answered:

"It's the old horse and two of the cows!"

"God bless me!" cried the Squire, rushing forward with his bucket.

Some villagers came running up, and he shouted to these, but what he said
neither he nor they could tell. The shrieks and snortings of the horse
and cows, the steady whirr of the flames, drowned all lesser sounds. Of
human cries, the Rector's voice alone was heard, between the crashing
blows of his axe upon the woodwork.

Mr. Pendyce tripped; his bucket rolled out of his hand; he lay where he
had fallen, too exhausted to move. He could still hear the crash of the
Rector's axe, the sound of his shouts. Somebody helped him up, and
trembling so that he could hardly stand, he caught an axe out of the hand
of a strapping young fellow who had just arrived, and placing himself by
the Rector's side, swung it feebly against the boarding. The flames and
smoke now filled the whole cow-house, and came rushing through the gap
that they were making. The Squire and the Rector stood their ground.
With a furious blow Mr. Barter cleared a way. A cheer rose behind them,
but no beast came forth. All three were dead in the smoke and flames.