In a few minutes a great fire roared alight, the turpentine in the pine-apples and fir-boughs blazing like pitch. Then he fetched the barrel of the gun, and the oaken stock, and the silver plates and mountings, and threw them into the heat.
The flaming wood swallowed them up; he stood and watched it.
After a while a knock came at his house-door.
"Who is there?" he called.
"It is I," said a peasant's voice. "There is so much smoke, I thought you were on fire. I was on the lower hill, so I ran up—is all right with you?"
"All is right with me."
"But what is the smoke?"
"I bake my bread."
"It will be burnt to cinders."
"I make it, and I eat it. Whose matter is it?"