“No. We have a long way to go yet,” cried the squire, “and if we run faster we shall be too much exhausted to help.”
“But, father—oh, it is so dreadful!” cried Dick, as in imagination he pictured horror after horror.
“Can you run, Dick—faster?”
“Yes, father, yes.”
“I can’t,” panted Hickathrift; “I’ve growed too heavy.”
“Run on, then, and shout and batter the door. We’ll get up as quickly as we can.”
“Ay, roon, Master Dick, roon!” cried the wheelwright. “Fire’s ketched the thack.”
Dick doubled his fists, drew a long breath, and made a rush, which took him fifty yards in advance. Then he trotted on at the same pace as the others; rushed again; and so on at intervals, getting well ahead of the rest. But never, in the many times he had been to and fro, had he so thoroughly realised how rough and awkward was the track, and how long it took to get to Grimsey farm.
As he ran on, it was with the fire glowing more brightly in his face, and the various objects growing more distinct, while there was something awful in the terrible silence that seemed to prevail, in the midst of which a great body of fire steadily rose, in company with a cloud of smoke, which was spangled with tiny flakes that seemed to be of gold. Tree, shed, barn, and chimney-stack, too, seemed to have been turned to the brilliant metal; but to the lad’s great relief he saw that the wheelwright was wrong, the “thack” had not caught, and so far the house was safe, though the burning stacks were so near that at any moment the roof of the reed-thatched house might begin to blaze.
At last there was a sound—one that might have been going on before, but kept by the distance from reaching Dick’s ear—a cock crowed loudly, and there was a loud cackling from the barn where the fowls roosted.