I set the bolt on the door of the little lean-to shed, where the
faggots were kept, that the devil entered into me all in a breath;
and I thought of Lilian upstairs in her white bed, and of how the
day must come, when he would see how pretty she looked and white,
and I said to myself, 'No, it never shall, not if I burn for it
too.'

I hope you are understanding me. I sometimes think there is
something done to folks when they are learning to be parsons as
takes out of them a part of a natural person's understandingness;
and I would rather have told the doctor, but then he couldn't have
told me whether these are the kind of things Christ died to make His
Father forgive, and I suppose you can.

What I did was this. I clean forgot all about uncle and how fond I
was of Whitecroft, and how much I had always loved Lilian (and I
loved her then, though I know you can't understand me when I say
so), and I took all them faggots, dragging them across the sanded
floor of the kitchen, and I put them in the parlour in the little
wing to the left, and just under Lilian's bedroom, and I laid them
under the wooden corner cupboard where the best china is, and then I
poured oil and brandy all over, and set it alight.

Then I put on my hat and jacket, buttoning it all the way down, as
quiet as if I was going down to the village for a pound of candles.
And I made sure all was burning free, and out of the front door I
went and up on to the Downs, and there I set me down under the wall
where I could see Whitecroft.

And I watched to see the old place burn down; and at first there was