on
her, and crushed her. Instant death must have followed.'

'Why was she here?' said Manston.

'From what we can hurriedly collect, it seems that she found the door
of your house locked, and concluded that you had retired, the fact being
that your servant, Mrs. Crickett, had gone out to supper. She then came
back to the inn and went to bed.'

'Where's the landlord?' said Manston.

Mr. Springrove came up, walking feebly, and wrapped in a cloak, and
corroborated the evidence given by the rector.

'Did she look ill, or annoyed, when she came?' said the steward.

'I can't say. I didn't see; but I think--'

'What do you think?'

'She was much put out about something.'

'My not meeting her, naturally,' murmured the other, lost in reverie.
He turned his back on Springrove and the rector, and retired from the
shining light.

Everything had been done that could be done with the limited means
at their disposal. The whole row of houses was destroyed, and each
presented itself as one stage of a series, progressing from smoking
ruins at the end where the inn had stood, to a partly flaming
mass--glowing as none but wood embers will glow--at the other.

A feature in the decline of town fires was noticeably absent
here--steam. There was present what is not observable in
towns--incandescence.

The heat, and the smarting effect upon their eyes of the strong smoke
from the burning oak and deal, had at last driven the villagers back
from the road in front of the houses, and they now stood in groups
in the churchyard, the surface of which, raised by the interments of
generations, stood four or five feet above the level of the road, and
almost even with the top of the low wall dividing one from the other.
The headstones stood forth whitely against the dark grass and yews,
their brightness being repeated on the white smock-frocks of some of the
labourers, and in a mellower, ruddier form on their faces and hands, on
those of the grinning gargoyles, and on other salient stonework of the
weather-beaten church in the background.

The rector had decided that, under the distressing circumstances of
the case, there would be no sacrilege in placing in the church, for the
night, the pieces of furniture and utensils which had been saved from
the several houses. There was no other place of safety for them, and
they accordingly were gathered there.

6. HALF-PAST TWELVE TO ONE A.M.

Manston, when he retired to meditate, had walked rou