el rushed out, but the beacon was undisturbed.

"St Mary protect us!--'Tis the same noise I heard last night, and about
the same hour."

The stranger here entered the hut. Enveloped in a huge cloak, he sate
silent, and apparently inattentive; but the conversation was now abrupt,
and broken down into short and interrupted whispers.

"I wish old Hal and his wives were here, with all my heart," said one:
"we'd have a rare bonfire. How his fat paunch would swell! But for him
and his unlucky women, we had been snug in the chimney-corner, snoring
out psalmody, or helping old Barn'by off with the tit-bits in the
kitchen."

"Hush!" said his neighbour: "there be the faggots talking again. I think
they are bewitched.--Dan, look to them."

"Nay," said Dan, "they may bide awhile for me."

The words were scarcely uttered when the building seemed in a blaze.
Crash upon crash followed. The inmates, stupified with terror, were well
nigh suffocated ere their astonishment left them the power to escape.
In the full conviction that the foul fiend had taken him at his word,
Dan was dragged from the hut, wan, speechless, and gasping with
affright. Nothing less, too, than a visit from his Satanic majesty in
person was expected by the terrified rustics.

On gaining the outside, the whole burning mass was before them, one vast
pyramid of flame. Flakes of blazing matter were hurled into the sky,
with short and rapid explosions. The roar of the wind through the
glowing furnace was awful and appalling. Huge and ignited fragments were
borne away with frightful rapidity. They rode on the rolling volumes of
smoke like fire-fiends armed with destruction; but the vast reservoir of
flame still glowed on, apparently undiminished. The curtain of night
seemed to be suddenly undrawn. Objects the most minute were visible as
in the broad view of day. The brown heath, the grey and the mossy stone,
were each distinguishable, but clad alike in one bright and unvarying
colour, red as the roaring furnace. Soon the great magazine of
inflammable matter in the interior caught fire, and rolled out in a wide
mass of light, like the first burst of a volcano.

The stranger stood with apparent unconcern, his back to the flames,
looking from the brink of the mountain northward, as if on the watch for
corresponding signals. Soon a bright star hung on the heights above
Sawley. Increasing in splendour, another broke out on the verge of the
horizon, marking the site o