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There was no one there when he reached it, but half-way down the incline he saw the light again, and up the broad, straight gallery came the cry of danger distinctly to his ears. "Hurry! hurry! The breaker's afire! The shaft's a-burnin'! run!" Instinctively Ralph unhitched the mule, dropped the trace-chains, and ran down the long incline of the plane.
"It's none of my business, and you needn't tell me anything about what you've been through." "But I jest has tuh, 'case it's been a-burnin' in here ever so long, an' never anybody tuh tell," and Jim slapped his hand on his breast as he spoke.
"See that, now," he said, snipping briskly with the scissors; "that string of woolen yarn that yez left there, a-burnin' away outside, might burst the whole gun, an' ivery sowl in the blockhouse would be kilt intirely, moind ye that, now! an they would n't be the Frenchies, nayther!" He gave her a keen warning glance at rather close range, then once more renewed his labors.
An' Old Ben, he said there was nigh two hundred horse-loads o' gold an' pearls, rubies, emeralds and diamonds took out o' that there town, an' it a-burnin' still, after they'd been there a month. Talk o' wealth!" The man with the broken nose raised himself from his place by the capstan and stretched his hairy arms with an evil, leering yawn.
At length he lost all prudence. "Nn o! Nnno o, sir! Not in this house you don't; and not on this place! Wait till he's off my land; I'm not goin' to have the infernal rebels a-turpentinin' my house and a-burnin' it over my head. What air you three skunks in such a sweat to git found out for, like a pack o' daymn' fools!
All was quiet inside, so I went into the room where the light was a-burnin'. There was a candle flickerin' on the mantelpiece a red wax one and by its light I saw " "Yes, I know all that you saw. You walked round the room several times, and you knelt down by the body, and then you walked through and tried the kitchen door, and then "
Slowly and somewhat dubiously he accepted the invitation. "I hain't seed ye fer quite a spell, Bud," began the girl smilingly, and with a brick red flush he answered. "Hit took holt on me ergin, Alexander. Hit war jest actually a-burnin' me up." She did not ask what he meant by "it." She knew full well and she did not reproach him. She only inquired, "What happened, Bud?"
"'Twere all a duddering mix-up. I niver a zeed anything loike it afore. Wimmen an' childer a-runnin' in and out among us like poultry; we could'n keep sections o' fours nohow. We carried some o' the little 'uns. And girt fires a-burnin' at night loike ricks a terrible blissey on the hills.
That ar cradle always will rock in a gale, but I've got used to it, and don't mind it. 'Well, says Cerinthy, 'jist as true as you live, I just saw a woman with a silk gown on, and long black hair a-hangin' down, and her face was pale as a sheet, sittin' rockin' that ar cradle, and she looked round at me with her great black eyes kind o' mournful and wishful, and then she stooped down over the cradle. 'Well, says Lois, 'I ain't goin' to have no such doin's in my house, and she went right in and took up the baby, and the very next day she jist had the cradle split up for kindlin'; and that night, if you'll believe, when they was a-burnin' of it, they heard, jist as plain as could be, a baby scream, scream, screamin' round the house; but after that they never heard it no more."
"A-burnin' and a-burnin', and a-making o' volk madder and madder; but tek thou my word vor't, Joan, and I bean't wrong not twice i' ten year, the burnin' o' the owld archbishop 'ill burn the Pwoap out o' this 'ere land for iver and iver."
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