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.

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