and the barn was safe, Oswald had time to draw his breath and think, and to remember with despair exactly who it was that had launched a devastating fire-balloon over the peaceful marsh.
It was getting dusk by this time; but even the splendour of all those burning ricks against the darkening sky was merely wormwood and gall to Oswald's upright heart, and he jolly soon saw that it was the same to Dicky's.
'I feel pretty sick,' he said. 'Let's go home.'
'They say the whole eleven ricks are bound to go,' said Dicky, 'with the wind the way it is.'
'We're bound to go,' said Oswald.
'Where?' inquired the less thoughtful Dicky.
'To prison,' said his far-seeing brother, turning away and beginning to walk towards the bicycles.
'We can't be sure it was our balloon,' said Dicky, following.
'Pretty average,' said Oswald bitterly.
'But no one would know it was us if we held our tongues.'
'We can't hold our tongues,' Oswald said; 'if we do someone else will be blamed, as sure as fate. You didn't hear what that woman said about insurance money.'
'We might wait and see if anyone does get into trouble, and then come forward,' said Dicky.
And Oswald owned they might do that, but his heart was full of despair and remorse.
Just as they got to their bikes a man met them.
'All lost, I suppose?' he said, jerking his thumb at the blazing farmyard.
'Not all,' said Dicky; 'we saved the furniture and the wool and things – '
The man looked at us, and said heavily:
'Very kind of you, but it was all insured.'
'Look here,' said Oswald earnestly, 'don't you say that to anyone else.'
'Eh?' said the man.
'If you do, they're safe to think you set fire to it yourself!'
He stared, then he frowned, then he laughed, and said something about old heads on young shoulders, and went on.
We went on, too, in interior gloom, that only grew gloomier as we got nearer and nearer home.
We held a council that night after the little ones had gone to bed. Dora and Alice seemed to have been crying most of the day. They felt a little better when they heard that no one had been burned to death. Alice told me she had been thinking all day of large families burned to little cinders. But about telling of the fire-balloon we could not agree.
Alice and Oswald thought we ought. But Dicky said 'Wait,' and Dora said 'Write to father about it.'
Alice said:
'No; it doesn't make any difference about our not being sure whether our balloon was the cause of destruction. I expect it was, and, anyway, we ought to own up.'
'I feel so too,' said Oswald; 'but I do wish I knew how long in prison you got for it.'
We went to bed without deciding anything.
And very early in the morning Oswald woke, and he got up and looked out of the window, and there was a great cloud of smoke still going up from the doomed rickyard. So then he went and woke Alice, and said:
'Suppose the police have got that poor farmer locked up in a noisome cell, and all the time it's us.'
'That's just what I feel,' said Alice.
Then Oswald said, 'Get dressed.'
And when she had, she came out into the road, where Oswald, pale but resolute, was already pacing with firm steps. And he said:
'Look here, let's go and tell. Let's say you and I made the balloon. The others can stop out of it if they like.'
'They won't if it's really prison,' said Alice. 'But it would be noble of us to try it on. Let's – '
But we found we didn't know who to tell.
'It seems so fatal to tell the police,' said Alice; 'there's no getting out of it afterwards. Besides, he's only Jameson, and he's very stupid.'
The author assures you you do not know what it is like to have a crime like arsenic on your conscience, and to have gone to the trouble and expense of making up your mind to confess it, and then not to know who to.
We passed a wretched day. And all the time the ricks were blazing. All the people in the village went over with carts and bikes to see the fire – like going to a fair or a show. In other circumstances we should have done the same, but now we had no heart for it.
In the evening Oswald went for a walk by himself, and he found his footsteps turning towards the humble dwelling of the Ancient Mariner who had helped us in a smuggling adventure once.
The author wishes to speak the truth, so he owns that perhaps Oswald had some idea that the Ancient Mariner, who knew so much about smugglers and highwaymen, might be able to think of some way for us to save ourselves from prison without getting an innocent person put into it. Oswald found the mariner smoking a black pipe by his cottage door. He winked at Oswald as usual. Then Oswald said:
'I want to ask your advice; but it's a secret. I know you can keep secrets.'
When the aged one had agreed to this, Oswald told him all. It was a great relief.
The mariner listened with deep attention, and when Oswald had quite done, he said:
'It ain't the stone jug this time mate. That there balloon of yours, I see it go up – fine and purty 'twas, too.'
'We all saw it go up,' said Oswald in despairing accents. 'The question is, where did it come down?'
'At Burmarsh, sonny,' was the unexpected and unspeakably relieving reply. 'My sister's husband's niece – it come down and lodged in their pear-tree – showed it me this morning, with the red ink on it what spelled your names out.'
Oswald, only pausing to wring the hand of his preserver, tore home on the wings of the wind to tell the others.
I don't think we were ever so glad of anything in our lives. It is a frightfully blighting thing when you believe yourself to be an Arsenicator (or whatever it is) of the deepest dye.
As soon as we could think of anything but our own cleanness from guilt, we began to fear the worst of Tom Simkins, the farmer at Crown Ovenden. But he came out of it, like us, without a stain on his fair name, because he and his sister and his man Honeysett all swore that he had given a tramp leave to sleep up against the beanstack the night before the fire, and the tramp's pipe and matches were found there. So he got his insurance money; but the tramp escaped.
But when we told father all about it, he said he wished he had been a director of that fire insurance company.
We never made another fire-balloon. Though it was not us that time, it might have been. And we know now but too well the anxieties of a life of crime.
THE ENCHANCERIED HOUSE
