“I will not be touched by you,” she said hoarsely. “Where is Jason?” “Jason? Am I his keeper?” “The answer of Cain,” retorted Zerah. “This is your doing. I knew it would come, when you insured. And you have destroyed my brother also. O my God! my God! Would that I had never seen this day!” CHAPTER XXXVIII WANTED AT LAST Pasco thrust his wife within and shut the door behind. Zerah had returned early in the morning, and had found that her husband and Kate were away, and the house locked, whilst the stores were in conflagration. Half the parish was present. The fire had broken out some time after nightfall’at least, it had been observed about nine o’clock by a boy connected with the mill, who ran to the alehouse and roused the village orchestra, which was practising there, and in ten minutes nearly everyone in the little place was at the Cellars. The fire was pouring in dense sheets of flame out of the windows. It had apparently begun below, the wool above dropped into it as the rafters and boards gave way. Nothing could be done to arrest it, but precautions were adopted to prevent the fire communicating with a little rick of straw that Pepperill had for litter near the stables. The flames and smoke were carried inland, and no apprehensions were entertained of the house becoming ignited. Much comment was made on the absence of Pasco, his wife, and niece. But that which excited most uneasiness was the presence of Jason Quarm’s cart and donkey in the yard. If they were at the Cellars, then Jason could not be far distant. Was it possible that, finding the house locked up, and his relatives absent, he had made his way into the store-shed and perished there? This was the question hotly debated. When Mrs. Pepperill arrived from the other side of the river, and saw the conflagration, and heard that there was a probability that her brother had fallen a victim, she was driven frantic with terror and grief. In her mind connecting her husband with the occurrence, she charged him with the firing of the stores and with the death of her brother. Pepperill endeavoured to pacify her. He protested his innocence; he declared that he had left the house soon after herself, and by entreaty, remonstrance, and threat urged Zerah to hold her tongue and not recklessly put him in peril by rousing against him suspicion which was without grounds.