THE BARN DORMITORY—THE FIRE
Sometime late at night we retired to rest—or to try to rest. The prospective scene of our slumbers was a barn at the back of the tavern. By the light of a candle we had with us, I saw there was a depth of almost twelve inches of straw on the floor of the barn. One of our lot fixed the candle on a projecting stone in the wall, and I guess it was not long before we were all asleep. I could not have been asleep long, however, when I was awakened by great noise and unbearable heat. On “turning over,” I heard groans and shouts, and, by Jove! saw that the barn was on fire! I was dumbfounded for the instant, and scarce knew how to act. Being greatly fatigued by my previous day’s journey, I was not over wideawake; I was by no means the first to awake; in fact I believe I was the last. I had taken my coat and boot and slipper off, but there was no time to look for any of my apparel, and when I recovered my senses, I beat a hasty retreat.
MY ESCAPE FROM THE FIRE
It’s always a safe plan to look before you leap. I didn’t look before I leaped, with the result that jumping through a loophole in the wall at the rear of the barn, I found myself on alighting outside with the star-bespangled firmament above me, and—what do you think under me—I hardly like to say, but nevertheless it was a manure heap! I was booked to remain in this—perhaps more healthy than agreeable—predicament for some time; for, despite my struggles to regain liberty of thought and action, I could not extricate myself.
HOW THE PEOPLE RECEIVED ME
Meanwhile, the alarm of fire had been given, and a number of people from the neighbourhood appeared, in response, on the scene. I could not see them, being at the rear of the building, but could hear their shouts. The half-dozen Irishmen, I afterwards learned, all answered the roll-call, but I was missing. On this occasion, if it had never occurred before or since, my absence caused indescribable consternation. Many thought I had been burned to death or killed, for the roof of the barn had fallen in. After some little time, however, and after much struggling on my part, I was able to allay their fears by appearing before them. It required no small amount of pluck—as I call it—to face them—bootless, coatless, vestless, hatless, penniless, and, withal, with my feet and trousers besmeared with cow dung. But there is a time in every man’s life when he shall come to evoke sympathy from his fellows. “He’s coming!” they said, “Here he is!” they shouted, and as I passed along the ranks I was the object of universal sympathy in my woe-bestricken condition.
A CHATTY, QUIZZY, KINDLY POLICEMAN
A policeman came up to me and said they thought I was in the flames. I rashly told him that I might as well have been, considering my appearance. “Oh, you will get over that,” said the gentleman in blue cloth. “Where do you belong to?” I said I was a native of Keighley. “Who is your police superintendent?” he queried. “Mr Cheeseborough,” I replied. “That’s true,” he said. “Know you any in the force there?” “Yes,” I said, “I know Sergeant Kershaw, and another little ill-natured dog, Jack o’ Marks. Jack goes about in plainclothes, and is about as fly as a box of monkeys.” “All right,” returned Mr Policeman. “Now that you have told me the truth, were any of you smoking in the barn?” “No, we were all asleep,” said I. Then he said that would do, and as he had no orders to arrest me, I could go—till further orders. I learned from him that Mr Norton—the gentleman for whom I had been working at the mill—owned the barn, but he was away and would not be home that day.
THE RESULT OF THE FIRE
The merciless fiend did its work, and before the arrival of anything worthy the designation “fire extinguishing apparatus,” the barn had been razed. A farmhouse joined up to the barn, and a portion of this building, along with some of the furniture, was damaged. The morn was now breaking, and there was the usual gathering of quizzing onlookers. It turned out that I was the last man out of the barn. Some of my bed-fellows, I found, were as guilty as myself in disregarding the force of the proverb “Look before you leap,” for one of them, in making his hurried exit, jumped through the first opening he came across to find himself in the stables—“in a manger for his bed.” Through the fall he sustained a broken arm. One or two of the others were a little hurt.