to the door.

As I got near there was a strange smell stealing out on the damp night
air. I heard a snapping noise inside--I saw the light above grow
brighter and brighter--a pane of the glass cracked--I ran to the door
and put my hand on it. The vestry was on fire!

Before I could move, before I could draw my breath after that
discovery, I was horror-struck by a heavy thump against the door from
the inside. I heard the key worked violently in the lock--I heard a
man's voice behind the door, raised to a dreadful shrillness, screaming
for help.

The servant who had followed me staggered back shuddering, and dropped
to his knees. "Oh, my God!" he said, "it's Sir Percival!"

As the words passed his lips the clerk joined us, and at the same
moment there was another and a last grating turn of the key in the lock.

"The Lord have mercy on his soul!" said the old man. "He is doomed and
dead. He has hampered the lock."

I rushed to the door. The one absorbing purpose that had filled all my
thoughts, that had controlled all my actions, for weeks and weeks past,
vanished in an instant from my mind. All remembrance of the heartless
injury the man's crimes had inflicted--of the love, the innocence, the
happiness he had pitilessly laid waste--of the oath I had sworn in my
own heart to summon him to the terrible reckoning that he
deserved--passed from my memory like a dream. I remembered nothing but
the horror of his situation. I felt nothing but the natural human
impulse to save him from a frightful death.

"Try the other door!" I shouted. "Try the door into the church! The
lock's hampered. You're a dead man if you waste another moment on it."

There had been no renewed cry for help when the key was turned for the
last time. There was no sound now of any kind, to give token that he
was still alive. I heard nothing but the quickening crackle of the
flames, and the sharp snap of the glass in the skylight above.

I looked round at my two companions. The servant had risen to his
feet--he had taken the lantern, and was holding it up vacantly at the
door. Terror seemed to have struck him with downright idiocy--he
waited at my heels, he followed me about when I moved like a dog. The
clerk sat crouched up on one of the tombstones, shivering, and moaning
to himself. The one moment in which I looked at them was enough to
show me that they were both helpless.

Hardly knowing what I did, acting desperately on the fi