THE GYPSY POET. As early in the morning In pity and wide wonder My face your dark eyes scan: "Who art thou, and what aileth thee, Thou big unhappy man?" I am a gypsy poet, dear, A scholar-gypsy true; If all the strongest names be named, What aileth me, my gipsy child, After Heinrich Heine. VERSES. LOST spirit of a former love, Within the silent ebb and flow But when the sea is raging loud Lost spirit of the strange sad sea, Lost spirit of those happy years W. K. H. A FARM FIRE. EN o'clock on a freezing January night on Dartmoor. The click of the gate was unusual, for on Dartmoor everyone is early to bed. A woman's breathless panting could be heard through the window. Then came a sharp knock on the door. It was the farmer's wife from the next cottage. Across the moor she had seen the flames and smoke of a burning farmstead, and with wild visions of burning cattle, or it might be human beings, was seeking what help might be gathered in the scattered hamlet. No time was lost in reaching the burning farm, which was wrapped in flame from end to end, and sending up vast clouds of lurid smoke, to be borne off by the wind There was plenty of help, but little could be done. The only water was in a horse-pond in the yard, and in a few minutes the flames had enveloped the whole building, the fire being fanned by a strong and steady wind, that whirled off into the air masses of the flaming thatch. Nearly all the families from out-lying farms had come into the hamlet that evening to a village concert, and they helped to swell the little crowd around the burning buildings. The first question was as to the safety of the cattle, but they had been turned into the fields at the first alarm. For pecuniary as well as humanitarian reasons their safety was of the first importance. A few zealous helpers were waging a quite ineffectual warfare with the flames with water brought in buckets from the pond close by, but for the most part, men and women (though but few of the latter stayed to face the keen night wind) gathered in sympathetic groups in front of the burning farm, their faces lit with a picturesque glow by the shifting flames. In front there was nothing to be done, but the back of the buildings was to windward of the fire, and only the burning straw fallen from the thatch made approach to the walls difficult. There was no question of saving anything from the furnace inside, but the dairy projecting a little from the main building was as yet free from flame. An enterprising youth investigating at the window had detected stores of meat and dairy produce still unharmed, and fired the ambition of eager rescuers, whose efforts so far had been of no avail. The only opening in the walls was a window too small for ingress, but it was short work to tear up the thatch and laths of the roof, and make a hole through which four dim figures quickly dropped. Everything within reach was salved indiscriminately; a mild frenzy seized one enthusiast, who bore off empty bottles and pieces of cloth or scraps of metal with a triumphant joy which the rescuer of the Palladium cannot have surpassed. Out went everything through the roof; buckets and basins, vegetables, joints of beef, cheeses, bowls of cream, great pans of scalded milk, and firm yellow rolls of butter. The household stores followed, and pickles and jam, flour and bread, cider-barrels and biscuit-tins were passed quickly up to join the miscellaneous heap accumulating on the grass outside. Through the door from the dairy to the house the work was lit by the glow of the burning passage, and at times a shower of sparks or a spurt of flame made a momentary incursion. In five minutes everything was cleared; even the shelves were torn down and the table hoisted through the roof; the last and boldest achievement was the rescue of a mangle standing in the burning passage, and already reached by the fire; the ironwork was too hot to hold, but with the aid of an enshrouding cloth it was possible to get a grip; at first the mangle jammed tight in the doorway and seemed marked for destruction, but finally it toppled through into the dairy with a crash, and was hoisted through the roof like the rest; everything else of value was cut off by a screen of flame, so the place was evacuated and left to its fate. In a few minutes the roof caught fire, and soon it had fallen in on the floor below. There was little more to be saved; only the one fanatic was unsatisfied, and he found solace for his soul in making a sweep of a few books and photographs which could be reached through the broken window of the kitchen. All that remained was to try and save a barn which adjoined one end of the dwelling-house, and which was full of valuable wheat and wool. In front and behind improvised ladders were raised, and the barn-end was perpetually drenched with water sent up in buckets from below. Success was practically assured when the burning rafters running through to the barn from the house were cut away. One of the upper rooms, a bedroom, was immediately underneath the roof, and as the burning thatch fell in, almost everything had been consumed, only the frame of an iron bedstead standing naked and unashamed in the middle of the floor; as the flames broke through from the room below it gradually tilted and settled down, and when the burning joists collapsed finally toppled down on the debris underneath. In two hours the fire was burning down, and not more than a score of watchers was left, for a winter night on Dartmoor may be spent in better places than in the wet slush of a farm-yard. The vicar, who had come some fifteen miles across the moor to visit the outskirts of his wide parish, had, with the curate of the village, been active in doing what little could be done, but now all alike turned homeward. Only the farmer of Higher Merripit remained, with a friendly neighbour who shared his watch, to see to the end the destruction of his homestead. |