of tongues, and all eyes fearfully askant at the wall of fire, we gathered that a great reception had been prepared for us by my father:  lamps, lights in all the rooms, torches in the hall, illuminations along the windows, stores of fireworks, such a display as only he could have dreamed of.  The fire had broken out at dusk, from an explosion of fireworks at one wing and some inexplicable mismanagement at the other.  But the house must have been like a mine, what with the powder, the torches, the devices in paper and muslin, and the extraordinary decorations fitted up to celebrate our return in harmony with my father’s fancy.

Gentlemen on horseback dashed up to us.  Captain Bulsted seized my hand.  He was hot from a ride to fetch engines, and sang sharp in my ear, ’Have you got him?’ It was my father he meant.  The cry rose for my father, and the groups were agitated and split, and the name of the missing man, without an answer to it, shouted.  Captain Bulsted had left him bravely attempting to quench the flames after the explosion of fireworks.  He rode about, interrogating the frightened servants and grooms holding horses and dogs.  They could tell us that the cattle were safe, not a word of my father; and amid shrieks of women at fresh falls of timber and ceiling into the pit of fire, and warnings from the men, we ran the heated circle of the building to find a loophole and offer aid if a living soul should be left; the night around us bright as day, busier than day, and a human now added to elemental horror.  Janet would not quit her place.  She sent her carriage-horses to Bulsted, and sat in the carriage to see the last of burning Riversley.  Each time that I came to her she folded her arms on my neck and kissed me silently.

We gathered from the subsequent testimony of men and women of the household who had collected their wits, that my father must have remained in the doomed old house to look to the safety of my aunt Dorothy.  He was never seen again.

ETEXT EDITOR’S BOOKMARKS: 

Absolute freedom could be the worst of perils
Add on a tired pipe after dark, and a sound sleep to follow
Allowed silly sensitiveness to prevent the repair
As little trouble as the heath when the woods are swept
Bade his audience to beware of princes
But the flower is a thing of the season; the flower drops off
But to strangle craving is indeed to go through a death
Is it any waste of time to write of love? 
Not to do things wholly is worse than not to do things at all
Payment is no more so than to restore money held in trust
Self, was digging pits for comfort to flow in
Tears are the way of women and their comfort
The love that survives has strangled craving
The wretch who fears death dies multitudinously
There is more in men and women than the stuff they utter
Those who are rescued and made happy by circumstances
To kill the deer and be sorry for the suffering wretch is common
Twice a bad thing to turn sinners loose
What a man hates in adversity is to see ‘faces’
What else is so consolatory to a ruined man? 
Who shuns true friends flies fortune in the concrete
Would he see what he aims at? let him ask his heels
You may learn to know yourself through love