Just as Robin and Mousie were leaving Miss Biffin’s bower they heard shouts of “Fire! fire!” and suddenly the crowd of strollers and sight-seers all moved with one accord. Mousie and Rob were shoved and jostled till they were borne along in the rush of people, as helpless as a couple of corks on a Scotch burn.
When they passed out from the narrowed alleys of the fair, made by the lines of booths and side-shows, the press became less great, and they were able to keep clear of the rush.
How frightened they were at this sudden stampede; and now, to add to their dismay and the general excitement, they saw a fierce conflagration among some ricks. These ricks were standing about four fields’ distant, and what at first had been one fitful tongue of flame climbing stealthily the side of the dark mass, swiftly grew to be sevenfold and leaping. And from sevenfold it spread like molten gold over the stack, as if fire had been poured over it. And now a strange rushing sound grew out upon the air, and the stack was brilliantly illumined. The figures of the onlookers were cut out black against the glare. Then a heavy scroll of smoke mounted up into the divine beauty of the night sky, defiling it with thick vapour. Now and then there would come a lull in the fierce demolition, as if even the insatiable maw of the fire were momentarily replete. Then again it would break out all the more fiercely, and a bevy of sparks would swing out, and sail away against the darkness, like a great swarm of golden bees. The flames would mount ever higher and higher, and the rushing sound grow, and grow. How the antlered flames leaped and roared into the night sky, what a fierce light they shed on the surrounding world. How black and jagged the shadows were, how vast the columns of drifting smoke. The great elms in the hedgerow stood changed in the strange light, their lofty stillness intensified by the clamour, and all the depths of their cool leafage showing grey in the strong light.
The birds flew into the very faces of the onlookers, witless of their direction, and the rats ran from the burning hayricks among the crowd, blinded by the glare.
To Rob and Mousie, who had lived such sheltered lives, it was as if they had been transported to some other planet, to a world of tumult and alarm. They had no words to express their pitiful state; they stood dumbly clinging together.
And then two figures came towards them as they stood somewhat in the shadow—the figures of two men.
“The mischief’s done right enough, but it’s all for nothing, and we’ll get nothing for our trouble. We’re lucky if we gets quit of this; they’ve got news of it after all. I’ve been to the side-door and the front-door, but the whole place is barred; why, the very windows have their shutters up, and the great bulldog in the yard that Freedom said she’d poisoned, standing right up against the opening, showing his teeth. There’s been foul play somewhere; we’ve been split upon; and if I can lay my finger on who’s done it, I’ll——” his speech lost itself in a string of oaths and maledictions while he trod heavily forward to where the children stood. And as he turned his great ugly visage upon them, Mousie screamed, “It’s the man in the wood, Robin! it’s the man who killed the woman in the wood!” And before Robin could say a word in answer, he felt a great blow, as if the earth had jumped up and slapped him, and he knew nothing more. Then one of the men caught the frightened Mousie and tied a cruel bandage so quickly round her that she could neither scream nor speak, and another picked up Robin where he lay quite still upon the ground, and between them they carried the children away swiftly.
The men walked till they came to a belt of trees, far out upon the Down. Here they set their burdens by the embers of a fire of charred wood. Two or three rail-backed ponies were picketed out upon the green, and a great van loomed dark in the half-light. Several rough, unkempt faces peered at them, and dark forms crouched about the fire, stirring its embers to a fitful flame.
Mousie and Robin were in a gipsies’ encampment, and the very thick of their adventure about to begin.