"Jim Sanders!" slightingly spoke Cris. "What should have put Jim Sanders into your head, mother? No; it was your favoured nephew, Rupert Trevlyn!" Mrs. Chattaway broke into a cry as the words came from his lips. Maude started a step forward, her face full of indignant protestation; and Miss Diana imperiously demanded what he meant. "Don't stop me," said Cris. "Rupert Trevlyn was in the yard with a torch just before it broke out, and he must have set it on fire." "It can't be, Cris!" exclaimed Mrs. Chattaway, in accents of intense pain, arresting her son as he was speeding away. "Who says this?" Cris twisted himself from her. "I can't stop, mother, I say. I am going for the engines. You had better ask my father; it was he told me. It's true enough. Who _would_ do it, except Rupert?" The shaft lanced at Rupert struck to the heart of Mrs. Chattaway; unpleasantly on the ear of Miss Diana Trevlyn: was anything but agreeable to the women-servants. Rupert was liked in the household, Cris hated. One of the latter spoke up in her zeal. "It's well to try to throw it off the shoulders of Jim Sanders on to Mr. Rupert! Jim Sanders----" "And what have you to say agin' Jim Sanders?" interrupted Bridget, fearing, it may be, that the crime should be fastened on him. "Perhaps if I had spoken my mind, I could have told it was Mr. Rupert as well as others could; perhaps Jim Sanders could have told it, too. At any rate, it wasn't----" "What is that, Bridget?" The quiet but imperative interruption came from Miss Diana. Excitement was overpowering Bridget. "It was Mr. Rupert, ma'am; Jim saw him fire it." "Diana! Diana! I feel ill," gasped Mrs. Chattaway, in faint tones. "Let me go to him; I cannot breathe under this suspense." She meant her husband. Pressing across the crowded rick-yard--for people, aroused by the sight of the flames, were coming up now in numbers--she succeeded in reaching Mr. Chattaway. Maude, scared to death, followed her closely. She caught him just as he had taken a bucket of water to hand on to some one standing next him in the line, causing him to spill it. Mr. Chattaway turned with a passionate word. "What do you want here?" he roughly asked, although he saw it was his wife. "James, tell me," she whispered. "I felt sick with suspense, and could not wait. What did Cris mean by saying it was Rupert?" "There's not a shadow of doubt that it was Rupert," answered Mr. Chattaway. "He has done it out of revenge." "Revenge for what?" "For the horsewhipping I gave him. When I joined you upstairs just now, I came straight from it. I horsewhipped him on this very spot," continued Mr. Chattaway, as if it afforded him satisfaction to repeat the avowal. "He had a torch with him, and I--like a fool--left it with him, never thinking of consequences, or that he might use it in the service of felony. He must have fired the rick in revenge."