The
Squire was soon out of breath--it was twenty years or more since he had
run a quarter of a mile. He did not, however, relax his speed. Ahead of
him in the distance ran the second groom; behind him a labourer and a
footman. The stable-bell at Worsted Skeynes began to ring. Mr. Pendyce
crossed the stile and struck into the lane, colliding with the Rector,
who was running, too, his face flushed to the colour of tomatoes. They
ran on, side by side.

"You go on!" gasped Mr. Pendyce at last, "and tell them I'm coming."

The Rector hesitated--he, too, was very out of breath--and started
again, panting. The Squire, with his hand to his side, walked painfully
on; he had run himself to a standstill. At a gap in the corner of the
lane he suddenly saw pale-red tongues of flame against the sunlight.

"God bless me!" he gasped, and in sheer horror started to run again.
Those sinister tongues were licking at the air over a large barn, some
ricks, and the roofs of stables and outbuildings. Half a dozen figures
were dashing buckets of water on the flames. The true insignificance of
their efforts did not penetrate the Squire's mind. Trembling, and with
a sickening pain in his lungs, he threw off his coat, wrenched a bucket
from a huge agricultural labourer, who resigned it with awe, and joined
the string of workers. Peacock, the farmer, ran past him; his face and
round red beard were the colour of the flames he was trying to put out;
tears dropped continually from his eyes and ran down that fiery face.
His wife, a little dark woman with a twisted mouth, was working like a
demon at the pump. Mr. Pendyce gasped to her:

"This is dreadful, Mrs. Peacock--this is dreadful!"

Conspicuous in black clothes and white shirt-sleeves, the Rector was
hewing with an axe at the boarding of a cowhouse, the door end of which
was already in flames, and his voice could be heard above the tumult
shouting directions to which nobody paid any heed.

"What's in that cow-house?" gasped Mr. Pendyce.

Mrs. Peacock, in a voice harsh with rage and grief answered:

"It's the old horse and two of the cows!"

"God bless me!" cried the Squire, rushing forward with his bucket.

Some villagers came running up, and he shouted to these, but what he
said neither he nor they could tell. The shrieks and snortings of the
horse and cows, the steady whirr of the flames, drowned all lesser
sounds. Of human cries, the Rector's voice alone was heard, between the
cras