My father blinked at me a moment, vaguely. Then, quite suddenly, he thrust Elsie into my arms. "There," he said, "take her. Be good to her. She calls you her 'Dearest Joe.' You will never deserve half your luck--you will never know it. But as sure as my name is Joseph Yarrow, I will take it upon me to see that you behave yourself decently well to that girl." He was pretty much of a brick--father. At least, though he was only a grocer, I don't know anybody else's father I would change him for. And Elsie says so, too. I think, however--between ourselves--that he's just a bit gone on Elsie himself, and thinks I'm not half good enough for her. Well, I'm not! I don't deny the fact; and as for Elsie--she encourages us both in the belief. CHAPTER XXXII "THERE'S NAE LUCK ABOOT THE HOOSE" There's a bit more to tell about this part, though you might not expect it. It always makes me shiver to think of. But I could not help it. Nobody could--and anyway, the thing has got to be told. It is about Mad Jeremy, and what befell him when he fled upward through the smoke and flame, clambering by the balusters, my father says, more like a monkey than any human man. And, by the way, I am not sure that he really was a man--except that a wild beast would not have been so clever, and the devil ever so much cleverer! Or, at least, he has the credit of being. Did you ever see the burning of a great house--not in a city, I mean, but far in the country? Well, I have. There is not much to see till one is close by. A few pale, shivering flames, like the fires that boil the tea at a summer picnic--volumes of smoke rising over the parapet, mostly pale, and the sun serene above the scurry of helpless men, running this way and that, like ants when you thrust your stick into an ant hill to see what will happen. Hither and thither they go--all busy, all doing nothing. For one thing, water is lacking. The local fire brigade is always just about to arrive. If, by any chance, it does come, a boy with a garden squirt would do more good. Well, it was like that on the morning of the eleventh of February. When the day did come at last, there was nothing mean about it--considered as an early spring morning in Scotland. It was of the colour of pale straw, with a glint low down like newly thatched houses before the winter's storm has had a turn at them. Meanwhile, underneath, and looking so petty and foolish, was the crackling of the timbers, the falling in of the tiles, the smoke puffing and mounting like great strings of onions linked together, blue and stifling from the burning wood, white and steamy as the faggots slid outward into the moat, or fell with a crash into the pond.