“We’d better hide them,” said Dig, “where he can’t find them again.”
“Not safe,” said Arthur; “we’d better burn them.”
“Burn them!” said Dig, astounded by the audacious proposition. “Then we give up all our evidence.”
“Good job too; all the better for Marky. They’ve done us no good so far.”
This was true, and Dig, having turned the matter over, said he was “game.”
The conspirators therefore locked their door, and piled up their fire. It was long since their study had glowed with such a cheerful blaze. The resin-wheel flared, and crackled, and spat as if it was in the jest and was enjoying it, and the flames blazed up the chimney as though they were racing who should be the first to carry the joke outside.
The match-box and paper wedge vanished almost instantaneously, and the old bone-dry sack itself rose grandly to the occasion, and flared away merrily inch by inch, until, a quarter of an hour after the illumination had begun, the last glowing vestige of it had skipped up after the sparks.
The boys were sitting complacently contemplating this glorious finale when a loud knock came at the door, and a shout in Ainger’s voice of “Let me in!”
“What’s the row?” cried Arthur, shovelling the ashes under the grate, while Dig, with wonderful presence of mind, whipped out the toasting-fork, and stuck half a loaf on the end of it.
“Open the door,” cried Ainger, accompanying his demand with a kick which made the timbers creak. “Your chimney’s on fire!”