rst impulse that
occurred to me, I seized the servant and pushed him against the vestry
wall. "Stoop!" I said, "and hold by the stones. I am going to climb
over you to the roof--I am going to break the skylight, and give him
some air!"

The man trembled from head to foot, but he held firm. I got on his
back, with my cudgel in my mouth, seized the parapet with both hands,
and was instantly on the roof. In the frantic hurry and agitation of
the moment, it never struck me that I might let out the flame instead
of letting in the air. I struck at the skylight, and battered in the
cracked, loosened glass at a blow. The fire leaped out like a wild
beast from its lair. If the wind had not chanced, in the position I
occupied, to set it away from me, my exertions might have ended then
and there. I crouched on the roof as the smoke poured out above me
with the flame. The gleams and flashes of the light showed me the
servant's face staring up vacantly under the wall--the clerk risen to
his feet on the tombstone, wringing his hands in despair--and the
scanty population of the village, haggard men and terrified women,
clustered beyond in the churchyard--all appearing and disappearing, in
the red of the dreadful glare, in the black of the choking smoke. And
the man beneath my feet!--the man, suffocating, burning, dying so near
us all, so utterly beyond our reach!

The thought half maddened me. I lowered myself from the roof, by my
hands, and dropped to the ground.

"The key of the church!" I shouted to the clerk. "We must try it that
way--we may save him yet if we can burst open the inner door."

"No, no, no!" cried the old man. "No hope! the church key and the
vestry key are on the same ring--both inside there! Oh, sir, he's past
saving--he's dust and ashes by this time!"

"They'll see the fire from the town," said a voice from among the men
behind me. "There's a ingine in the town. They'll save the church."

I called to that man--HE had his wits about him--I called to him to
come and speak to me. It would be a quarter of an hour at least before
the town engine could reach us. The horror of remaining inactive all
that time was more than I could face. In defiance of my own reason I
persuaded myself that the doomed and lost wretch in the vestry might
still be lying senseless on the floor, might not be dead yet. If we
broke open the door, might we save him? I knew the strength of the
heavy lock--I knew the thick