them, and they lay without stir or sound. In some of them the stooks
were still encamped, but some were smooth stubble, empty, except where a
flock of turkeys filled it with dark, bunchy shapes. She walked steadily
on the whole day without any adventure, but when the dew was beginning
to fall through the twilight she came to a short, shady reach of lane,
at the end of which stood, in a green nook, a small, prim white cottage
with two peaked windows and a door to match. That, at least, is how it
would under ordinary circumstances have presented itself to a passer-by.
Just then, however, nobody would have noticed anything about it except
the fact that out of the open door thick coils of woolly black smoke
were rolling and rolling, stabbed through every now and again by thrusts
of flame, which even in the lingering daylight gleamed strongly fierce
and red. The house was evidently on fire. As Mad Bell drew nearer, she
became aware of a wheaten-coloured terrier standing in front of it; and
when he saw her he began to bark vehemently. She was used to being
barked at, though not in this way, for howls were interspersed, and it
was clearly meant not for a menace but an appeal. No other live creature
was visible about the place, until she had come quite close to the
surging door, when a small gossoon jumped up out of the ditch on the
opposite side of the road and rushed across to her.

"What 'ill I do at all, then?" he said, whimperingly, catching hold of
her shawl. "If them childer's burnt up widin there, Mr. Wogan 'ill be
in a fine way. It's for killin' the whole of us he'll be. And it wasn't
me set it afire. Sorra the match was I meddlin' wid, I could swear it. I
wasn't out of it any time, gettin' a few ripe berries to pacify them
childer, agin they would be wakin' and roarin', and when I come back,
there it is all a smother of smoke. Divil a thing else was I doin' on'y
mindin' them childer, and not meddlin' wid the matches, and goin' after
a couple of blackberries. And Mr. Wogan himself's away to
Ballymacartrican wid his boxes in the ass-cart. And all of them goin' to
quit out of it to-morra, if it wasn't for them childer bein' burnt up
inside--or maybe it's smothered they are. It's as unhandy as anythin'.
It went afire of itself. And he'll be ragin'."

He bawled all this louder and louder in competition with the clamour of
the dog, who kept on jumping up at each alternately, and evidently
considered his remarks better entit