When Molly had done this, she was told to strike her one remaining match and set light to the painted leaf. This she did, and stood back as it caught alight, and little tongues of fire and grey puffs of smoke curled round the Pumpkin. Higher the smoke curled, and thicker it became, until the Pumpkin was entirely hidden from view in the centre of a great column of grey smoke. Every one watched—fascinated. Suddenly there was a terrific bang—then the smoke began to thin and drift apart. As it cleared away a figure could be seen standing in the centre of it. It was Jack, dazed and rubbing his eyes. “Jack! Jack!” cried Molly, rushing toward him. “Oh, I am so glad! Are you quite all right, Jack? Are you hurt?” She drew him out of the smoke. “Hullo!” he said, gazing round. “Oh, I say, what’s happened?” He was soon told. “And do you mean to say that I’ve been stowed away in an old pumpkin, and been rolling about all over the country?—well, I must have looked an ass!” said Jack. “But I don’t remember anything—only feel as if I’ve been shut up somewhere and been to sleep.” He found his hand seized by one friend after another, and himself congratulated and questioned by the crowd that gathered round him. “And so it was your leaf that did the trick, Mr Papingay, was it?” said Jack, grasping that gentleman’s hand and pumping it up and down. “Well, I’m blessed—you are a marvellous man!” Which was just what Mr Papingay, his face wreathed in smiles, was thinking about himself. CHAPTER XXI _The Grey Pumpkin’s Fate_ And now, the smoke having entirely disappeared, Old Nancy turned again toward the Grey Pumpkin. She raised the Black Leaf high over her head and, closing her eyes, murmured something to herself; then she opened her eyes and said to Molly: “I have summoned the Pumpkin’s spies, but while we are waiting for them I want you to tell us the story of how you found the Black Leaf.” Molly felt very shy all at once, but she obeyed Old Nancy, and standing on the doorstep, facing the crowd, she told her story as briefly as she could, without leaving out the name of anybody who had helped. One of the councillors was asked by the King to take down her words in a note-book so that they could be afterward read by all those at a distance who could not hear. When Molly came to the part about Miss Lydia she forgot her shyness and grew enthusiastic. “I could never have got the Black Leaf at the end if it hadn’t been for Miss Lydia,” she cried. “She was awfully brave. Although she had been made blind by the Pumpkin she walked out into the garden where the Leaf was growing and where the Pumpkin and his spies were waiting—she went out deliberately—to distract them—while I got the Leaf.” “Three cheers for Miss Lydia!” cried someone in the crowd, and the cheers were given heartily, much to Miss Lydia’s confusion.