One or two observed that that fared to soothe theirs; for there was no reaction on the safe side of the fence. But the worst said in the Suffolk tongue was invariably capped by a different order of voice, which chimed in now. "The best thing Carlton can do is to cockle up with his church. The governor'll build you a new church and find a new man to fill it. There's nobody keener on a change as it is. I should like to be there when he hears . . ." The speaker was smoking a cigarette on a barrow wheeled from the shed. He might have been watching a display of fireworks, and one which was beginning to bore him. His unmoved eye sought change. It found the sexton hobbling in the glare. "Hi, Busby! Come here, I want you. What the dickens do you mean by setting fire to the church?" "Me set fire to it, Master Sidney? Me set a church afire? He! he! you allus fare to have yer laugh." "It will be no laughing matter for you when you're run in for it, Busby." "Go on, Master Sidney; you know better than that." "I wish I did. They hang for arson, you know! But I say, Busby, how's the frog?" The wizened face grew grave, but only as the screen darkens between the pictures; next instant it was alight with the ineffable joy of gratified monomania. The sexton hobbled nearer, clawing his vest. "Oh, that croap away; that's at that now! Would 'ee like to listen, Master Sidney?" "No, thanks, Busby; don't you undo a button," said the young gentleman, hastily. "I can hear it from where I am." The sexton went into senile raptures. "You can hear it? You can hear it? Do you all listen to that: he can hear it, he can hear it from where he sit. The little varmin, to croap so loud! That must be the fire. That fare to make him blink! An' Master Sidney, he can hear him from where he sit!" The sexton hurried off to spread his triumph; but he boasted to deaf ears. There was a sudden light below the sharp horizon between black roof and slaty sky, yet no flame rose above the roof. It was as though the southern eaves had caught. Ivey rushed out of the north transept. Mr. Carlton followed, axe in hand. His chest and arms were smudged and inflamed, his blinking eyelids were burnt bare, and the sweat stood all over him in the red light leaping from the shivered windows. "It's no use, lads!" he called to those still running with the buckets; "the boards have caught on the other side. Come and help me smash them in, and we may save the chancel yet! Every man who is a man," he shouted to the group across the fence, "come--lend a hand to save God's sanctuary!" And he led the way with his axe, stinging to the waist in the open air, but drunk with battle and the battle's joy. And there was no more talking behind the rectory fence; not a man was left there to talk; even Sidney Gleed had dropped his cigarette to follow the inspired madman with the axe.