"Mike," said Gus gravely, "do you know how the fire began?"
"Do I know?" muttered Mike. "Who should know if I do not?" Then, suddenly turning his eyes on Gus, he asked in shrill, sharp tones—
"Lad, do you think that fire was kindled without hands?"
"Mike!" exclaimed Gus, with consternation in his voice. "You don't mean to say that any one was wicked enough to set fire to the house on purpose?"
"Ah, truly," was the reply, in broken, quavering tones; "there was one wicked enough, and that was Mike Newman. You are horrified, Gus; but it made me mad to feel that I was ground down and trampled on by a man no better than myself, just because he was rich and I was poor.
"The strike brought more trouble into my home than into any other in the village. My daughter, poor soul, when her husband's wages ceased, made a brave struggle to live on almost nothing. How she managed I cannot tell. She grew to be mere skin and bone, for many a meal she would go without for the sake of her children. But then they sickened, and Willie—you remember our brave, bonny little Willie—was the first to go. The twins followed, and she, poor soul, could not bear up after the loss of her babes. She was soon laid beside them. They're all four sleeping under the old elm in the churchyard.
"Do you wonder I felt wild with Darnell? How could I bear to think of his living in ease and plenty, his wife and children wanting nothing, and ours starved like that! I said there was no such thing as justice in heaven or earth. God was against us too. He was the God of the rich, not of the poor. I thirsted for revenge. I longed to do something with this weak old arm that should make Darnell smart. I used to long for a gun, that I might take a shot at him some night after dark. But I knew my aim would be unsteady, and that I should miss my mark. Then the thought struck me that I would set fire to his house. That was not easy; but when the devil tempts a man to sin, he opens up the way for him.
"I was hanging about that night near Darnell's house. It was midnight. I had been to the Rising Sun. A man from London had been there speaking to us chaps, and when he'd said his say, he treated us to a glass all round. His words had stirred my blood, and mayhap the liquor was too strong for me, for I had tasted scarce a morsel that day. I was passing the door leading into the court at the back of the house, when a sudden gust of wind blew it open. No one is afeard of thieves at Rayleigh, and Brown and his wife had forgotten to make it fast before they went to bed.
"Something said within me, 'Now's your time.' I went in and looked about. The lights was all out; every one in the house was abed. There are no shutters to the kitchen window. I broke a pane, and opened it with little trouble. I climbed in, found a box of matches, and then went down to the cellar. I knew my way, for I'd had a job of cutting and piling wood there once. There was wood stored there then, and on the other side of the cellar stood a barrel of paraffin oil. I carried the wood over, an armful at a time, and piled it about the barrel; I found some straw, and added that, and then I set fire to the heap. I only waited to see that it would burn, and then I hurried away. No one saw me, and the fire destroyed all traces of my having entered the house. I went home and to bed, but I could not sleep; and before morning the rheumatics had seized on me so that I could not move. The pain has never left me since."
"Oh, Mike! How could you do such a thing?" cried Gus aghast. "How did you feel when you knew the house was burning away, and nothing could check the flames?"