Pepperill bustled about, vociferating, driving spectators back, encouraging workmen, running after cakes and cider, and making the confusion greater. Kate sat on a fallen beam, chin in hand, watching intently every spade as it turned the ashes, wincing at every pick driven into the cinder heaps. The tears were trickling down her cheeks. Then Walter Bramber, who had just arrived, went up to Farmer Pooke and asked leave to run a cord across from one rail to another, and volunteered with the assistance of Noah Flood and John Pooke to keep the people from interference. “Why should they be kept back? Don’t they want to find what has become of Mr. Quarm every whit as much as me? Let ’em come on,” shouted Pepperill. But the constable saw the advantage of the proposal, and gave the order. In ten minutes the scene of the conflagration was freed from sightseers, who were confined at a distance. Then Bramber went to Kitty and said in a low tone, “You do not think it is hopeless, I trust?” “I do not know what to think,” she answered. “Is it true what I have heard, that your uncle returned here after dark and left you at the top of the hill?” Kate did not answer. “That is what is said. Jan Pooke told me he had heard it from your own lips.” She continued silent. “I should like to know, Kitty, the truth in this matter.” “I can say nothing,” she answered, and hung her head lower. Bramber was surprised, but he had not time to expend in conversation: he had undertaken to keep off the crowd, and some were diving under the rope, others attempting to stride over it. An hour was expended in turning about the refuse. All the coal had been consumed, but, singularly and inexplicably, not all the fleeces. Bundles of wool were found’not many, indeed, but some, singed, not consumed, which, when exposed, exhaled a sickening odour. The dangerous portions of tottering walls had been thrown down, the slate flooring exposed. Not a trace of Jason Quarm could be found. Pasco, who had been nervous, watching all the operations of the excavators in deadly fear of a revelation of the charred remains of his brother-in-law, breathed freely, recovered all his audacity and boisterousness. “I said as much, but none believed me. Jason is gone; he was not the man to sit quiet in a fire. How the fire came about is a question we won’t go into too close.” “The bones you spoke of,” said Pooke, “we ha’n’t come on them. They’ve been consumed’perhaps poor Quarm as well. The fire must have been deadly hot.” “It didn’t burn those fleeces,” answered Pasco triumphantly. “I’ll tell you what; Jason made off for reasons well known to himself. If we don’t hear of him again, I sha’n’t wonder; but burned here he certainly was not, as any fool can see. He was not the man to let himself burn. Cripple though he was, he could hop out of danger.”