The lame man, the man who could not walk, had left his bed if not the house! Carlton caught up the lamp to go in search. And even on the landing a voice came hailing him from the region below.
"Mr. Carlton! Mr. Carlton! Quick, sir, quick!"
George Mellis was still at the side door, and in the lamplight the other could not see an inch beyond.
"Have you found him, George? He's not in bed!"
"Who—Musk? No, sir, no!"
"Then what have you seen?"
The grenadier had a wet skin, a quivering lip, a starting eye.
"Oh, I can't tell you, sir! I may be wrong. God grant it! But give me the lamp, and go outside and look for yourself!"
In sheer perplexity Carlton complied; and for an instant imagined some outrageous freak of nature; for the trees of the Flint House drive, black as night a few minutes before, now stood etched against the reddest dawn that he had ever seen—at midnight in December! Then a flame shot upwards, and another, and another; and Mellis was left standing, lamp in hand, a brilliant patch of light and colour, yet less brilliant every instant in the face of that unearthly glare in the east. Swift feet were pattering down the drive; and had such a start, before the soldier found his senses, that it was only in the churchyard he caught them up.
Long Stow church was on fire for the second time, and burning faster than it had burnt between five and six years before. The crackle of the pitch pine was loud as musketry already. The roof was already burning; its destruction had been the climax of the former fire.