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Updated: May 21, 2025
As he disposed of supper, eating half a pie with his cracklings and greens, his mother moved from the stove to the table, refilled his plate, waved the paper streamers of the fly brush above his head, exactly as she had for his father. Already, he assured himself, he had become a man. The journey to Beaulings the following day was an unremarkable replica of the one before.
But lye and alum could not go in at the same time, since being alkaline and acid, they would destroy each other. Great pains were taken not to scorch the tallow that meant smelly and ill-colored candles. After straining it clear of cracklings, it was caked in something deep, then turned out and laid on the highest shelf in the lumber house to await molding time.
There were pleasant cracklings of burning pine sticks and the sizzle of frying bacon. Great swarms of bluebottle flies buzzed lazily in the warm sunshine. Sometimes, across a pool of noonday silence, we heard birds singing; for the birds didn't desert us. When we gave them a hearing, they did their cheery little best to assure us that everything would come right in the end.
Oleron did not know what he replied, but it sufficed to call forth the further remark that the winter had been a bad one for influenza, but that the spring weather seemed to be coming at last.... Even this slight contact with the commonplace steadied Oleron a little; an idle, nascent wonder whether the landlady brushed her hair every night, and, if so, whether it gave out those little electric cracklings, was shut down with a snap; and Oleron was better....
He ran like a boy across the meadow, through the gap in the fence, and down the hill to the cabin by the spring. All one side of it was in flames. The fire was curling around the front door and bursting through the windows with fierce cracklings. Dashing frantically around to the back door, he threw himself against it, shouting to know if any one was within.
Mike looked all about for some evidence of the children or elders, but not a sign or sound was to be heard except the strange cracklings of forest silences. Mike gave a shrill whistle to call anyone who had strayed close by, but no one answered except Babs who was suddenly awakened from her nap. "O-oh, Mike! Did oo know I is losted affer oo?" said she, rubbing her eyes with her mittened hands.
Even the glowing logs in the grate burned tranquilly, without any of those brisk cracklings and sputterings which make such cheerful company of a fire, while the distant roar of London's traffic came murmuringly, dulled to a gentle monotone by the honeycomb of narrow side streets that intervened between the gaunt, red-brick Buildings and the bustling highways of the city.
Above the hissing of steam and the first feeble cracklings of flame, rose the stentorian voice of the Captain from his post at the base of the demolished bridge. "Fight, men! Fight! Fight! There are dying men below! Stand by! Fight for them!" He was bloody and almost unrecognizable as he stood there clutching a stanchion for support.
He ached from head to foot from the intensity of the mood he had passed through. He went over the recent incidents, almost stunned by his experience and then went outside and stood under the stairs, listening. Tree toads were chirping, there were suspicious cracklings in the grass as of bugs stirring. A duck quacked somewhere feebly.
Banging and slamming of shutters; smashing of windows and the ringing clash of falling glass; clatter of flying feet along the halls; shrieks, supplications, dumb moanings of despair, within, hoarse shouts of command outside; cracklings and mappings, and the windy roar of victorious flames! Bang, bang, bang! on the door, and a cry: "Turn out the house is on fire!"
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