Page:C N and A M Williamson - The Lightning Conductor.djvu/100

 only thing that might have put the fire out, if one could have got it, and then gone near enough to throw it on. Since there was none, the only thing to do was to stand by; and as I'd scorched my hands a little, I suppose I instinctively put them in my pockets."

Monsieur Talleyrand laughed. "You tell your story very well," said he, "but"

He didn't get farther than that "but," for just then up came running the farmer and his wife from the fields, where they had seen the flames. They began chattering shrilly, in a dreadful state about their buildings, but Brown quieted them down, pointing out that no harm had been done to anything of theirs, and that the fire was out. "Now," he said, "since I didn't burn the car, who did?"

I looked at Monsieur Talleyrand because Brown was looking at him, or rather glaring, when suddenly a loud exclamation from the farmer and his wife made me turn to see what was going to happen next. What I saw was the most wonderful old figure hobbling out of the house, through the door I'd left open—a mere knotted thread of an old thing, in a red flannel nightgown, I think it must have been, and a few streaks of grey hair hanging from a night-cap that tied up its flabby chin. It was the old woman who had breathed so much in the dark the night before; and no wonder they exclaimed at seeing her crawling out of doors, hardly dressed.

Somehow I felt frightened; she was just like a witch—horrifying, but pathetic too, so old, so little life left in her. She would have come hobbling on