Tobe buried Checker's hand in his great horny palm. "Mr. Checkers," he said, and his voice grew husky, "ye 're God's own kind; may He have ye in His keepin'!" and he climbed upon his wagon, and drove slowly out into the night.
Checkers was alone. He went slowly into the house. A clock upon the mantel was chiming ten. There was still two hours before train time. He sat down and wrote a long letter to Judge Martin, sealed and stamped it, and put it in his pocket. His hat and light overcoat lay upon a chair beside him. He arose and put them on. His satchel, cane, and umbrella he then carefully laid on the stoop outside, and stood a while listening in the darkness. Apparently satisfied, he returned, and, taking one last, lingering look around, put out the lights.
For perhaps ten minutes he was busy at something under the stairway. He then silently emerged and locked the door.
The people of Clarksville and that vicinity are given to retiring early. Had they been abroad, or even awake, as late as eleven o'clock that night, they might have seen a startling spectacle in the distance—that of a mass of ruthless, hungry flames devouring a little white dwelling; leaping up in their fierce ecstacy to the heavens, and painting the sky all about a lurid, smoky crimson.
Checkers sat perched upon the fence some distance off. One heel was caught upon the first rail below him. His elbow rested upon his knee, and his upturned palm supported his chin.
The poor little house writhed helpless in the withering grasp of the remorseless flames. "This, then, was the final ending," he thought—"ashes to ashes," literally. This was the awakening from his short dream of bliss. Here he had lived six happy months; then ill-fortune singled him out for a plaything. He laughed a bitter, mirthless laugh.
The night was perfectly still and the myriad sparks from the flames rose straight to heaven. "There 's one good thing about it all," he mused, "and that is that I kept neglecting to insure the house and furniture when I went to Little Rock. That being the case, it 's a wonder I did n't burn out before this. I guess it was coming. I probably got a lead of a couple of days on my luck, and beat it out a length or two."
He looked at his watch. He had still half an hour before train time. The fire was burning lower. Suddenly the whole standing structure fell in with a muffled crash. Again the flames rose high and fierce; but they rapidly died down, and soon there remained of the fair white cottage but a blackened, smouldering ruin.
Checkers climbed down and went over near by. Nothing of value was left. The very foundations were cracked and fallen in; but the sounds of voices on the road now warned him that he must be going.
He turned for an instant in the direction of the Barlow house, and bowed low. "Now, you thieving old highbinder," he said, "take the change;" and, diving into a grove of trees he took a roundabout way through the fields to avoid the gathering crows which, finally aroused, now flocked to the scene of the disaster. Breathless, he arrived on the nick of time. His trunk was thrown aboard the train; he entered the sleeper and was whisked away toward Little Rock.