“I wonder how it could have caught fire?” thought Tom, but as no answer suggested itself, he hurried on to the fire.
It was enveloped in a blaze when he came up, and surrounded by a group of men and boys, some in their shirt-sleeves, though it was a December night. The fire-engine was on the ground, but the firemen were inactive, for it was clear that nothing could be done to arrest the flames.
Prominent among those present was the rather portly form of John Simpson, bareheaded, and clad in a showy dressing-gown, the same he had worn in his interview with Tom and Darius Darke only a few hours earlier.
Mr. Simpson seemed excited and nervous, but that certainly was not surprising, considering that the fire was on his own premises, and might as well have involved his dwelling-house.
“Well, squire,” said Newell Ingalls, a near neighbor, “the old barn will have to go.”
“Yes, sir, there’s no doubt about that.”
“Is there any insurance?”
“No; but the building was worth very little. There might have been two or three tons of hay inside.”
“Have you any suspicion as to how it caught fire? It seems rather queer it should have caught of itself.”
“I am afraid I can explain the matter, Mr. Ingalls,” said Squire Simpson, raising his voice a little, as if he desired the crowd to hear what he was about to say.