The flames were streaming high in the air; yet before the young fellows reached Battick's gate the fire seemed decreasing. They could still hear Battick hoarsely shouting.
Entering by the gate they dashed around the house and out behind the barns. Hiram had felt, although he had not said it to Orrin, that he knew the nature of the disaster. Yancey Battick's stack of wheat was more than half consumed!
He had been running madly from pump to stack, trying to throw enough water on the sheaves to put out the fire. But the blaze had burned up through the very heart of the stack. It must have, indeed, to have burned the wheat at all after the exceedingly heavy rain of three hours before.
"You're too late! Too late!" shrieked the man wildly. "They have got me again. What did I tell you, Strong?" for he recognized the young manager of Sunnyside by the fading light of the fire.
"Why didn't you pull the stack to pieces?" shouted Orrin, beginning to burrow into the bottom of the stack which the fire seemed not to have consumed, a good deal as a terrier would burrow for a rat. "Come on, Hiram. We can save some of this wheat."
But the sheaves which he dragged out proved to have had their heads entirely burned. Although the flames soon flickered out and left but a smouldering heap, there was but very little wheat left.
"They got me again! They got me again!" mourned the shaken Battick. "What did I tell you, Mr. Strong?"
"Why, Mr. Battick, do you really believe some enemy burned your wheat stack?"
"It certainly was no friend of mine," returned the man laughing wildly.
"You said a true word there, Brother," Orrin Post remarked bluntly. "Whom do you suspect?"