And yet when I eyed the transfigured scene it did not seem exactly like a bonfire or any ritual illumination.  It was too chaotic, and too close to the houses of the town.  All one side of a cottage was painted pink with the giant brush of flame; the next side, by contrast, was painted as black as tar.  Along the front of this ran a blackening rim or rampart edged with a restless red ribbon that danced and doubled and devoured like a scarlet snake; and beyond it was nothing but a deathly fulness of light.

I put on some clothes and went down the road; all the dull or startling noises in that din of burning growing louder and louder as I walked.  The heaviest sound was that of an incessant cracking and crunching, as if some giant with teeth of stone was breaking up the bones of the world.  I had not yet come within sight of the real heart and habitat of the fire; but the strong red light, like an unnatural midnight sunset, powdered the grayest grass with gold and flushed the few tall trees up to the last fingers of their foliage.  Behind them the night was black and cavernous; and one could only trace faintly the ashen horizon beyond the dark and magic Wilton Woods.  As I went, a workman on a bicycle shot a rood past me; then staggered from his machine and shouted to me to tell him where the fire was.  I answered that I was going to see, but thought it was the cottages by the wood-yard.  He said, “My God!” and vanished.

A little farther on I found grass and pavement soaking and flooded, and the red and yellow flames repainted in pools and puddles.  Beyond were dim huddles of people and a small distant voice shouting out orders.  The fire-engines were at work.  I went on among the red reflections, which seemed like subterranean fires; I had a singular sensation of being in a very important dream.  Oddly enough, this was increased when I found that most of my friends and neighbours were entangled in the crowd.  Only in dreams do we see familiar faces so vividly against a black background of midnight.  I was glad to find (for the workman cyclist’s sake) that the fire was not in the houses by the wood-yard, but in the wood-yard itself.  There was no fear for human life, and the thing was seemingly accidental; though there were the usual ugly whispers about rivalry and revenge.  But for all that I could not shake off my dream-drugged soul a swollen, tragic, portentous sort of sensation, that it all had something to do with the crowning of the English King, and the glory or the end of England.  It was not till I saw the puddles and the ashes in broad daylight next morning that I was fundamentally certain that my midnight adventure had not happened outside this world.