only word I could think of that went "to the
spot," and I hurried on to Brown. "All I minded was seeing you with your
hands in your pockets. It didn't seem like you."

"You don't understand," said he. "Just as I opened the doors to drive in
the car I'd brought, I saw at a glance that there was something queer
about yours. The front seat was off; and as I came nearer I found the
screw had been taken out of the petrol tank. With that I caught sight of
a flame creeping along a tightly twisted piece of cotton waste--the
stuff one cleans cars with. Then I knew that someone had planned to set
fire to the car and leave himself time to escape. I sprang at it to
knock away the waste, but I was too late. That instant the vapour
caught, and I was helpless to do any good, because sand, and a huge lot
of it, was the only thing that might have put the fire out, if one
could have got it, and then gone near enough to throw it on. Since there
was none, the only thing to do was to stand by; and as I'd scorched my
hands a little, I suppose I instinctively put them in my pockets."

Monsieur Talleyrand laughed. "You tell your story very well," said he,
"but----"

He didn't get farther than that "but," for just then up came running the
farmer and his wife from the fields, where they had seen the flames.
They began chattering shrilly, in a dreadful state about their
buildings, but Brown quieted them down, pointing out that no harm had
been done to anything of theirs, and that the fire was out. "Now," he
said, "since I didn't burn the car, who did?"

I looked at Monsieur Talleyrand because Brown was looking at him, or
rather glaring, when suddenly a loud exclamation from the farmer and his
wife made me turn to see what was going to happen next. What I saw was
the most wonderful old figure hobbling out of the house, through the
door I'd left open--a mere knotted thread of an old thing, in a red
flannel nightgown, I think it must have been, and a few streaks of grey
hair hanging from a night-cap that tied up its flabby chin. It was the
old woman who had breathed so much in the dark the night before; and no
wonder they exclaimed at seeing her crawling out of doors, hardly
dressed.

Somehow I felt frightened; she was just like a witch--horrifying, but
pathetic too, so old, so little life left in her. She would have come
hobbling on into the courtyard, but the farmer stopped her; and there
she stood on the door-sill, raising herself up and up