his ear. He was about to walk on, when he noticed on his left hand
an unusual light--appearing about half a mile distant. Oak watched
it, and the glow increased. Something was on fire.

Gabriel again mounted the gate, and, leaping down on the other side
upon what he found to be ploughed soil, made across the field in the
exact direction of the fire. The blaze, enlarging in a double ratio
by his approach and its own increase, showed him as he drew nearer
the outlines of ricks beside it, lighted up to great distinctness. A
rick-yard was the source of the fire. His weary face now began to
be painted over with a rich orange glow, and the whole front of his
smock-frock and gaiters was covered with a dancing shadow pattern of
thorn-twigs--the light reaching him through a leafless intervening
hedge--and the metallic curve of his sheep-crook shone silver-bright
in the same abounding rays. He came up to the boundary fence, and
stood to regain breath. It seemed as if the spot was unoccupied by
a living soul.

The fire was issuing from a long straw-stack, which was so far gone
as to preclude a possibility of saving it. A rick burns differently
from a house. As the wind blows the fire inwards, the portion in
flames completely disappears like melting sugar, and the outline is
lost to the eye. However, a hay or a wheat-rick, well put together,
will resist combustion for a length of time, if it begins on the
outside.

This before Gabriel's eyes was a rick of straw, loosely put together,
and the flames darted into it with lightning swiftness. It glowed on
the windward side, rising and falling in intensity, like the coal of
a cigar. Then a superincumbent bundle rolled down, with a whisking