“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 crashing blows of his axe upon the woodwork.

Mr. Pendyce tripped; his bucket rolled out of his hand; he lay where he had fallen, too exhausted to move.  He could still hear the crash of the Rector’s axe, the sound of his shouts.  Somebody helped him up, and trembling so that he could hardly stand, he caught an axe out of the hand of a strapping young fellow who had just arrived, and placing himself by the Rector’s side, swung it feebly against the boarding.  The flames and smoke now filled the whole cow-house, and came rushing through the gap that they were making.  The Squire and the Rector stood their ground.  With a furious blow Mr. Barter cleared a way.  A cheer rose behind them, but no beast came forth.  All three were dead in the smoke and flames.

The Squire, who could see in, flung down his axe, and covered his eyes with his hands.  The Rector uttered a sound like a deep oath, and he, too, flung down his axe.