w appeared behind this
shouting man and among the smoke, and Gabriel found that, far from
being alone he was in a great company--whose shadows danced merrily
up and down, timed by the jigging of the flames, and not at all by
their owners' movements. The assemblage--belonging to that class of
society which casts its thoughts into the form of feeling, and its
feelings into the form of commotion--set to work with a remarkable
confusion of purpose.

"Stop the draught under the wheat-rick!" cried Gabriel to those
nearest to him. The corn stood on stone staddles, and between these,
tongues of yellow hue from the burning straw licked and darted
playfully. If the fire once got UNDER this stack, all would be lost.

"Get a tarpaulin--quick!" said Gabriel.

A rick-cloth was brought, and they hung it like a curtain across the
channel. The flames immediately ceased to go under the bottom of the
corn-stack, and stood up vertical.

"Stand here with a bucket of water and keep the cloth wet." said
Gabriel again.

The flames, now driven upwards, began to attack the angles of the
huge roof covering the wheat-stack.

"A ladder," cried Gabriel.

"The ladder was against the straw-rick and is burnt to a cinder,"
said a spectre-like form in the smoke.

Oak seized the cut ends of the sheaves, as if he were going to engage
in the operation of "reed-drawing," and digging in his feet, and
occasionally sticking in the stem of his sheep-crook, he clambered up
the beetling face. He at once sat astride the very apex, and began
with his crook to beat off the fiery fragments which had lodged
thereon, shouting to the others to get him a bough and a ladder, and
some water.

Billy Smallbury--one of the men who had been on the waggon--by this
time had found a ladder, which Mark Clark ascended, holding on beside
Oak upon the thatch. The smoke at this corner was stifling, and
Clark, a nimble fellow, having been handed a bucket of water, bathed
Oak's face and sprinkled him generally, whilst Gabriel, now with a
long beech-bough in one hand, in addition to his crook in the other,
kept sweeping the stack and dislodging all fiery particles.

On the ground the groups of villagers were still occupied in doing
all they could to keep down the conflagration, which was not much.
They were all tinged orange, and backed up by shadows of varying
pattern. Round the corner of the largest stack, out of the direct
rays of the fire, stood a pony, bearing a