"Then who done it?" questioned Silas.
"Done what?"
"Set the elder's house on fire."
Bud was astounded, and so was his wife. The former looked sharply at his visitor for a moment, and then backed toward the nearest chair.
"Isn't it Riley's house?" he gasped.
"Course not. I can see it plain from my door, an' there's Riley's house standin' up safe an' sound as it ever was. It's Elder Bowen's, fast enough. I kinder thought you done it to pay him for shovin' you outen his lot by the neck, and I said to my old woman that you had sarved him jest right; but if you didn't do it, then some of that Committee of Safety must be to work."
Bud hadn't once thought of that, and it put an entirely different look on the matter. If it was true that the "outbreak had come," it must be that—
"There's a light off this a-way, too," observed Mrs. Goble, who to conceal her agitation from the visitor, had moved around the room until she found an opening between the logs through which she could look out toward Barrington. "'Pears like there might be an other house a-fire."
"Hey-youp!" yelled Bud, whose terror had given away to almost fiendish exultation. "The outbreak has come, like I said it was goin' to do, but it aint the babolitionists an' niggers that's doin' of it. It's our own friends. Come on, Sile. Me an' you mustn't hang back when there's work to be done for the 'Federacy an' danger to be met."
"Now's a good time to settle with old man Bailey," Silas remarked.