belonging to that class of society which casts its thoughts into the form of feeling, and its feelings into the form of commotion - set to work with a remarkable confusion of purpose.
`Stop the draught under the wheat-rick!' cried Gabriel to those nearest to him. The corn stood on stone staddles, and between these, tongues of yellow hue from the burning straw licked and darted playfully. If the fire once got under this stack, all would be lost.
`Get a tarpaulin - quick!' said Gabriel.
A rick-cloth was brought, and they hung it like a curtain across the channel. The flames immediately ceased to go under the bottom of the corn-stack, and stood up vertical.
`Stand here with a bucket of water and keep the cloth wet,' said Gabriel again.
The flames, now driven upwards, began to attack the angles of the huge roof covering the wheat-stack.
`A ladder,' cried Gabriel.
`The ladder was against the straw-rick and is burnt to a cinder,' said a spectre-like form in the smoke.
Oak seized the cut ends of the sheaves, as if he were going to engage, in the operation of `reed-drawing', and digging in his feet, and occasionally sticking in the stem of his sheep-crook, he clambered up the beetling face. He at once sat astride the very apex, and began with his crook to beat off the fiery fragments which had lodged thereon, shouting to the others to get him a bough and a ladder, and some water.
Billy Smallbury - one of the men who had been on the waggon - by this time had found a ladder, which Mark Clark ascended, holding on beside Oak upon the thatch. The smoke at this corner was stifling, and Clark, a nimble fellow, having been handed a bucket of water, bathed Oak's face and sprinkled him generally, whilst Gabriel, now with a long beech-bough in one hand, in addition to his crook in the other, kept sweeping the stack and dislodging all fiery particles.
On the ground the groups of villagers were still occupied in doing all they could to keep down the conflagration, which was not much. They were all tinged orange, and backed up by shadows of varying pattern. Bound the corner of the largest stack, out of the direct rays of the fire, stood a pony, bearing a young woman on its back. By her side was another woman, on foot. These two seemed to keep at a distance from the fire, that the horse might not become restive.
`He's a shepherd,' said the woman on foot. `Yes - he is. See how his crook shines as he beats the rick with it. And his smock-frock is burnt in two holes, I declare! A fine young shepherd he is too, ma'am.'
`Whose shepherd is he?' said the equestrian in a clear voice. `Don't know, ma'am.'
`Don't any of the others know?'
`Nobody at all - I've asked 'em. Quite a stranger, they say.'
The young woman on the pony rode out from the shade and looked anxiously around.
`Do you think the barn is safe?' she said.
`D'ye think the barn is safe, Jan Coggan?' said the second woman, passing on the question to the nearest man in that direction.
`Safe now - leastwise I think so. If this rick had gone the barn would have followed. 'Tis that bold shepherd up there that have done the most good - he sitting on the top o' rick, whizzing his great long arms about like a windmill.'