fair hair all tumbled about
her face. It was more than any woman could have borne to see her
lying there, and think that early in the new year it was him that
would see her lying like that of a morning.

And that night the place seemed very quiet and empty, as if there
was more room in it for being unhappy in. When Lilian had taken her
candle and gone up to bed, I walked through all the rooms below, as
uncle's habit was, to see that all was fast for the night. It was as
I set the bolt on the door of the little lean-to shed, where the
faggots were kept, that the devil entered into me all in a breath;
and I thought of Lilian upstairs in her white bed, and of how the
day must come, when he would see how pretty she looked and white,
and I said to myself, 'No, it never shall, not if I burn for it
too.'

I hope you are understanding me. I sometimes think there is
something done to folks when they are learning to be parsons as
takes out of them a part of a natural person's understandingness;
and I would rather have told the doctor, but then he couldn't have
told me whether these are the kind of things Christ died to make His
Father forgive, and I suppose you can.

What I did was this. I clean forgot all about uncle and how fond I
was of Whitecroft, and how much I had always loved Lilian (and I
loved her then, though I know you can't understand me when I say
so), and I took all them faggots, dragging them across the sanded
floor of the kitchen, and I put them in the parlour in the little
wing to the left, and just under Lilian's bedroom, and I laid them
under the wooden corner cupboard where the best china is, and then I
poured oil and brandy all over, and set it alight.

Then I put on my hat and jacket, buttoning it all the way down, as
quiet as if I was going down to the village for a pound of candles.
And I made sure all was burning free, and out of the front door I
went and up on to the Downs, and there I set me down under the wall
where I could see Whitecroft.

And I watched to see the old place burn down; and at first there was
no light to be seen.

But presently I see the parlour windows get redder and redder, and
soon I knew the curtains had caught, and then there was a light in
Lilian's bedroom. I see the bars of the window as you do in the
ruined mill when the sun is setting behind it; and the light got
more and more, till I see the stone above the front door that tells
how it was builded by one of our name