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.
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