had died of heart disease.

THE FIRE

Before the bell had time to sound the alarm a huge pillar of smoke
and flame, leaping high in the breathless August night, told the whole
village the news of the fire. Men, women, and children hurried to the
burning place. The firemen galloped down the rutty road with their
barrels of water and hand-pumps, yelling. The bell rang, with hurried,
throbbing beats. The fire, which was further off than it seemed to be
at first sight, was in the middle of the village. Two houses were
burning--a house built of bricks and a wooden cottage. The flame was
prodigious: it soared into the sky like the eruption of a volcano, and
the wooden cottage, with its flat logs and blazing roof, looked like a
sacrificial pyre consuming the body of some warrior or Viking. In the
light of the flames the soft sky, which was starless and flooded with
stillness by the large full moon, had turned from blue to green. A dense
crowd had gathered round the burning houses.

The firemen, working like bees, were doing what they could to extinguish
the flames and to prevent the fire spreading. Volunteers from the crowd
helped them. One man climbed up on the edge of the wooden house, where
the flames had been overcome, and shovelled earth from the roof on the
little flames, which were leaping like earth spirits from the ground.
His wife stood below and called on him in forcible language to descend
from such a dangerous place. The crowd jeered at her fears, and she
spoke her mind to them in frank and unvarnished terms. It was St. John
the Baptist's Day. Some of the men had been celebrating the feast by
drinking. One of them, out of the fulness of his heart, cried out:
"Oh, how happy I am! I'm drunk, and there's a fire, and all at the same
time!" But most of the crowd--they looked like black shadows against
the glare--looked on quietly, every now and then making comments on the
situation. One of the peasants tried to knock down the burning house
with an axe. He failed. Someone not far off was playing an accordion and
singing a monotonous rhythmical song.

Amidst the shifting crowd of shadows I noticed a strange figure, who
beckoned to me. "I see you are short-sighted," he said, "let me lend you
a glass." His voice sounded thin and distant, and he handed me a piece
of glass which seemed to be more opaque than transparent. I looked
through it and I noticed a difference in things:

The cottages had disappeared; in