at
least a fortnight late this year. We shall want the tall men for
this--Jacobs, Enderby, Anselme--you take these three lamps on the other
side while I find somebody to help me with mine."

"On the score of height, at least," said Ringfield pleasantly, leaving
his seat and striding down the centre of the barn, "I can offer my
services. Which are the ones to be lighted? These two and the one
just over our heads?"

"Very good of you, I'm sure," responded the rector briefly. "They are
quite steady on their brackets, I suppose, men? Now shut those doors;
we don't want any draught. Be careful with the matches, everybody!"

The others had got to work first, and along their side of the wall,
Anselme, Jacobs, and Enderby, the butcher, slowly lit their three
lamps, when, Ringfield, busy over a refractory wick and just in the act
of applying a match, in turning his head, saw directly beneath him the
basket-chair and its occupant as well as the young woman in charge of
it.

The shock of perceiving what was in reality more of a Thing than a
person, being an unfortunate child of about nine years of age,
otherwise well formed, but with a weak and hanging head enlarged very
much beyond its normal size and yet with a pair of shrewd eyes and a
smiling mouth, told upon his nerves. He started, leant too heavily on
the bracket, and in a second the lighted lamp, as yet without a
chimney, fell on the floor.

In another second the straw and decorations were all in a blaze, the
barn full of smoke and commotion; and he was conscious only of himself
and the rector wildly stamping, grovelling, and pushing with might and
main for what seemed hours of fear and suspense. The men tore the
great doors open; there were, happily, no corridors to tread, no stairs
to descend; the women and children first, and then their husbands and
fathers, rushed out, mostly uninjured, into the cool twilight air, and
when Ringfield came to himself he found that in some way he too was
outside the barn, holding on to the basket-chair, nearly hysterical
from the fright he had sustained, but still endeavouring to calm the
dreadful child and its nurse, both of whom were shrieking wildly.

"Angeel! Angeel!" cried the girl, and then in French: "Oh, what would
they say to me if anything happened to you! It doesn't matter about
me, only you, Angeel, only you!"

Ringfield looked around, dazed. The comfort, jollity, and abandon of
the picnic tea were things o