aw caught fire, blazed up furiously, and the
place rapidly filled with rolling clouds of smoke.

He could not notice it, however, for the flames that fluttered about his
garments where they were soaked with the spirit, and for some few
minutes he thought of nothing but extinguishing the purply blaze.

They burned him but slightly, and in several places went out as the
spirit became exhausted; but here and there the woollen material of his
garments began to burn with a peculiar odour before he had extinguished
the last spark.

Meanwhile, although the straw blazed furiously, and the smoke filled the
place so that respiration would have been impossible, no help came. The
spirit fluttered and danced as it burned, and save here and there where
it lay in inequalities of the floor, it was nearly consumed, the danger
now being from the straw, which still blazed.

Fortunately for Hilary, although he could feel the glow, his foresight
in sweeping it to one corner saved him from being incommoded, and the
heat caused a current of cool night-air to set in through the window and
keep back the blinding and stifling fumes.

He listened, and could hear shouts in the distance; but no one came to
his help, and he could not avoid feeling that if he had been dependent
upon aid from without he must have lost his life. Fortunately for him,
just at a time when his fate seemed sealed, the flames from the burning
straw reached their height, and though they blackened the ceiling they
did no worse harm, but exhausted from the want of supply they sank lower
and lower. There was not a scrap of furniture in the place, or salient
piece of wood to catch fire, and so as the spirit burned out, and the
blazing straw settled down into some blackened sparkling ash, Hilary's
spirits rose, and with the reaction as he clung there by the window came
a feeling of indignation.

"If I don't be even with some of them for this!" he muttered. "They
half starve me, and then try to burn me to death."

"Yes, that's right," he cried. "Bravo, heroes! Come, now the danger's
over."

For as he sat there he could hear hurrying feet, the rattle of a key in
the chapel door, and shouts to him to come out.

The smoke was so dense that the fresh comers could not possibly see him
where he sat in the window, and they cried to him again to come out.

"I sha'n't come," said Hilary to himself; "you'll only lock me up
somewhere else, and now I have found out as much as