‘I can’t say. I didn’t see; but I think—’
‘What do you think?’
‘She was much put out about something.’
‘My not meeting her, naturally,’ murmured the other, lost in reverie. He turned his back on Springrove and the rector, and retired from the shining light.
Everything had been done that could be done with the limited means at their disposal. The whole row of houses was destroyed, and each presented itself as one stage of a series, progressing from smoking ruins at the end where the inn had stood, to a partly flaming mass—glowing as none but wood embers will glow—at the other.
A feature in the decline of town fires was noticeably absent here—steam. There was present what is not observable in towns—incandescence.
The heat, and the smarting effect upon their eyes of the strong smoke from the burning oak and deal, had at last driven the villagers back from the road in front of the houses, and they now stood in groups in the churchyard, the surface of which, raised by the interments of generations, stood four or five feet above the level of the road, and almost even with the top of the low wall dividing one from the other. The headstones stood forth whitely against the dark grass and yews, their brightness being repeated on the white smock-frocks of some of the labourers, and in a mellower, ruddier form on their faces and hands, on those of the grinning gargoyles, and on other salient stonework of the weather-beaten church in the background.
The rector had decided that, under the distressing circumstances of the case, there would be no sacrilege in placing in the church, for the night, the pieces of furniture and utensils which had been saved from the several houses. There was no other place of safety for them, and they accordingly were gathered there.
6. HALF-PAST TWELVE TO ONE A.M.
Manston, when he retired to meditate, had walked round the churchyard, and now entered the opened door of the building.