"Burn him down!—Burn him down!—the hemmed murderer!"
Then began a regular siege. Stones showered upon the farmhouse roof, the shiver of broken glass tinkled through the dull roar of the attackers, groans and screams answered the bursting bang of the shot-gun. Men began to seize faggots from the wood-pile, and run with them towards the house. Then some tore up a haystack, but the wind caught the hay and blew it everywhere, flinging swathes and streamers of it into the rioters' faces, giving them sudden armfuls of it, making their noses and eyes smart with the dust and litter.
It was quite dark now. The hulk of Boarzell loomed black behind the struggle, its fir crown standing out against a great wall of starless sky. Then suddenly something began to blaze—no one seemed to know what, for it was behind the crowd; but it roared and crackled, and sparks and great burning strands flew out from it, threatening house and besiegers alike with destruction.
They had piled the faggots against the door of the barn. The workmen inside were tumbling about in the dark, half ignorant of what was going on.
"Bring a light!" called someone. A boy dashed up with a handful of flaming straw—it blew out of his hand and flared away over the roof, scattering showers of sparks. A man yelled out that his shirt was burning. "Bring a light!" someone called again. Then someone else shouted—"The constables from Rye!"
The crowd ebbed back like a wave, carrying Reuben, now screaming and terrified, towards where something unknown burned with horrible crackles and roaring.
"The constables from Rye!"
The crowd was like a boa-constrictor, it seemed to fold itself round him, smashing his ribs. He screamed, half suffocated. His forehead was blistered with heat. Again the crowd constricted. A dizziness came this time with the suffocation, and strange to say, as consciousness was squeezed out of him like wind out of a bellows, he had one last visit of that furious hate which had made him join the battle—hate of those who had robbed his father of Boarzell, and hate of Boarzell itself, because he would never be able to tame it as one tames a bull with a ring in its nose.
He choked, and fell into the darkness.