This was December, and it was in February the following year that Dutton again called at our place of business. There was a strange, stern, iron meaning in his face. "I am in a great hurry," he said, "and I have only called to say, that I shall be glad if you will run over to the farm to-morrow on a matter of business. You have seen, perhaps, in the paper, that my dwelling-house took fire the night before last. You have not? Well, it is upon that I would consult you. Will you come?" I agreed to do so, and he withdrew.
The fire had not, I found, done much injury. It had commenced in a kind of miscellaneous store-room; but the origin of the fire appeared to me, as it did to the police-officers that had been summoned, perfectly unaccountable. "Had it not been discovered in time, and extinguished," I observed to Mrs. Rivers, "you would all have been burned in your beds."
"Why, no," replied that lady, with some strangeness of manner. "On the night of the fire, Annie and I slept at Mr. Elsworthy's" (I have omitted to notice, that my brother-in-law and family had returned to their old residence), "and Mr. Dutton remained in London, whither he had gone to see the play."
"But the servants might have perished?"
"No. A whim, apparently, has lately seized Mr. Dutton, that no servant or laborer shall sleep under the same roof with himself; and those new outhouses, where their bedrooms are placed, are, you see, completely detached, and are indeed, as regards this dwelling, made fire-proof."
At this moment Mr. Dutton appeared, and interrupted our conversation. He took me aside. "Well," he said, "to what conclusion have you come? The work of an incendiary, is it not? Somebody too, that knows I am not insured—"
"Not insured!"
"No; not for this dwelling-house. I did not renew the policy some months ago."
"Then," I jestingly remarked, "you, at all events, are safe from any accusation of having set fire to your premises with the intent to defraud the insurers."
"To be sure—to be sure, I am," he rejoined with quick earnestness, as if taking my remark seriously. "That is quite certain. Some one, I am pretty sure, it must be," he presently added, "that owes me a grudge—with whom I have quarreled, eh?"