With a strange fascination Jean Jacques' eyes were fastened on the glow.
He clucked to his horses, and they started jerkily away. M. Fille and
the widow Poucette said good-bye to him, but he did not hear, or if he
heard, he did not heed. His look was set upon the red reflection which
widened in the sky and seemed to grow nearer and nearer. The horses
quickened their pace. He touched them with the whip, and they went
faster. The glow increased as he left Vilray behind. He gave the horses
the whip again sharply, and they broke into a gallop. Yet his eyes
scarcely left the sky. The crimson glow drew him, held him, till his
brain was afire also. Jean Jacques had a premonition and a conviction
which was even deeper than the imagination of M. Fille.

In Vilray, behind him, the telegraph clerk was in the street shouting to
someone to summon the local fire-brigade to go to St. Saviour's.

"What is it--what is it?" asked M. Fille of the telegraph clerk in
marked agitation.

"It's M'sieu' Jean Jacques' flour-mill," was the reply.

Wagons and buggies and carts began to take the road to the Manor Cartier;
and Maitre Fille went also with the widow of Palass Poucette.




CHAPTER XVII

HIS GREATEST ASSET