Mr. Linton had resolutely put away his trouble, and was inspecting the remains with a keen, businesslike face.
“It’s a matter of restoring rather than rebuilding,” he told Dr. Anderson, who was spluttering with indignation still, more than an hour after his arrival. “The insurance should cover the damage, I fancy; and the back of the house can be built after more modern notions, which won’t be a disadvantage. The stables? No—they will go up again precisely as they were. And the place will look the same, in the main; we don’t want it altered. It will look abominably new, of course; our old mantle of ivy and virginia creeper is destroyed, and the walls will be bare for a long while. Poor old Hogg is mourning over his dead roses and the general havoc in his garden.
“Well, you take it calmly!” said the little doctor, explosively.
David Linton shrugged his shoulders.
“No good doing anything else,” he answered. “And, after all, I have such immense cause for thankfulness in getting Norah out of that confounded place unhurt, that nothing else really matters. It’s a nuisance, of course, and what I’m to do with the youngsters’ holidays I don’t know; it’s pretty rough on them. But—good Lord, Anderson! I want to go and feel the child whenever I look at her, to make sure that she’s really all right! It seems incredible—I never saw so hideously close a shave!”
“Norah’s absolutely matter of fact over it,” the doctor said. “I rebuked her in my best professional manner for doing such a mad thing, and she looked at me in mild surprise, and remarked, ‘Why, if I hadn’t, Jim would have gone!’ It seemed to finish the argument as far as she was concerned. Wonder if your fellows have got Harvey?”
“Oh, they’re bound to get him,” the squatter answered. “And I wouldn’t care to be Harvey when they do.”
Murty O’Toole had commenced detective operations with break of day. He had not ceased to abuse himself for failing to be at the stables in time to help.
“A set of useless images,” said he, in profound scorn. “Slapin’ an’ snorin’ like so manny fat pigs—an’ Miss Norah an’ Masther Jim on the shpot! Bad luck to the heat an’ the races!—ivery man jack of us was aslape almost before we was in bed, ’twas that tired we was. But that’s no excuse!” Murty refused to be comforted, and only derived faint solace from the determination to find out the cause of the fire.
It did not require sleuth-hound abilities. The little paddock had burned in patches, for here and there were green expanses of clover that had checked the fire, and the hawthorn hedge had helped to stop it at the boundary; but the west wind had taken it straight across to the stables, and in the morning light the brown, burnt ground led Murty quickly to the clump of lemon gums. Behind them a kerosene tin stood, inverted, and the burn began there. When the stockman picked it up the blackened square of charred grass beneath it showed out sharply.