It still
was there when they said to him suddenly that the wind had changed, and
that the flame and sparks were now blowing toward the saw-mill. Even
when he gave orders, and set to work to defend the saw-mill, arranging a
line of men with buckets on its roof, and so saving it, this look
remained. It was something spiritual and unmaterial, something, maybe,
which had to do with the philosophy he had preached, thought and
practised over long years. It did not disappear when at last, after
midnight, everyone had gone, and the smouldering ruins of his greatest
asset lay mournful in the wan light of the moon.
Kind and good friends like the Clerk of the Court and the New Cure had
seen him to his bedroom at midnight, leaving him there with a promise
that they would come on the morrow; and he had said goodnight evenly, and
had shut the door upon them with a sort of smile. But long after they
had gone, when Sebastian Dolores and Seraphe Corniche were asleep, he had
got up again and left the house, to gaze at the spot where the big white
mill with the red roof had been-the mill which had been there in the days
of the Baron of Beaugard, and to which time had only added size and
adornment.
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