He got a pail of water to toss on the smouldering carpet. After he had lifted the smothering rug, and as he doused out the few remaining sparks his wife called to him.
“Anybody down there, Amos?”
“No, nobody now,” grimly answered the old man.
“Well, it smells like some one was smoking down there. I smell smoke, Amos. There must be somebody there!”
“No! They’ve gone,” he answered. “It was the lamp you smelled smoking. It blew up!”
“Blew up! Deacon Blackford what ails you? What’s happened, anyhow?”
“I don’t rightly know yet, myself. Seems quite considerable must have happened, and it might have been worse. You can come down if you want to. There’s nobody here now but me, and the fire’s out.”
“The fire’s out!” cried his wife from the head of the stairs. “What fire? Who started the fire?”
“Come down and you’ll see it all,” he answered, looking about to make sure there were no stray sparks anywhere.
Mrs. Blackford lost no time in descending, and her surprise was as great as was the deacon’s. But it was the loss of her curtains, the burned hole in the carpet, the broken lamp and the charred rug that surprised Joe’s foster-mother. She had not seen the intruder go out of the window, as had her husband.