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Updated: June 29, 2025
"Stand here with a bucket of water and keep the cloth wet." said Gabriel again. The flames, now driven upwards, began to attack the angles of the huge roof covering the wheat-stack. "A ladder." cried Gabriel. "The ladder was against the straw-rick and is burnt to a cinder." said a spectre-like form in the smoke.
Tess looked down again, and carefully abstained from gazing in that direction. Thus the afternoon dragged on. The wheat-rick shrank lower, and the straw-rick grew higher, and the corn-sacks were carted away. At six o'clock the wheat-rick was about shoulder-high from the ground.
"Well, it might possibly be, that, after the countess had left M. de Boiscoran, Fate might have stepped in. Jacques has told us how the letters which he was burning had suddenly blazed up, and with such violence that he was frightened. Who can tell whether some burning fragments may not have set a straw-rick on fire? You can judge yourself.
Then after surmounting a steep hill, where the lane had worn a deep hollow, they found a plain with hills all round it, and here, close to the sward, was the straw-rick from which they were to load. Bevis insisted upon building the load, that is putting the straw in its place when it was thrown up; but in three minutes he said he hated it, it was so hot and scratchy, so out he jumped.
The fur cap he wears allows the round shape of his head to be seen, and the thick neck which is the colour of a brick. He trudges deliberately round the straw-rick: there is something in the style of the man which exactly corresponds to the barn, and the straw, and the stone staddles, and the waggons.
Then he pushed and heaved at it, till it began to roll, and giving it a final thrust with his foot, away it went, at first rumbling and rolling slowly, and then faster and with a thumping, till presently it bounded and leaped ten yards at a time, and at the bottom of the hill sprang over the hedge like a hunter, and did not stop till it had gone twenty yards out into the stubble towards the straw-rick.
I gazed around helplessly for shelter. A few yards to our right rose the cumbersome shape of a last year's straw-rick; it was better than nothing. "Come!" I said, taking her arm firmly. "I'll find you shelter." She consented silently, and I crushed a path for her through the ripe grain until we reached the rick. The rain was beginning to pelt us sharply.
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