As she paused she saw Matt come running from the Hall yard carrying one end of the longest ladder, followed by Rob, his son, with the other end.

They ran under the Big Oak, shouting to Marion, ‘It’s Hodge’s! Get there at once!’ and ran on.

Marion picked up the bucket again and ran on. There was a crowd round Hodge’s. This cottage stood close to the top of the stream bank, which there fell steeply down some seven or eight feet to the stream. A tall alder tree grew on the water’s edge, its twisted roots making a little platform overhanging a deep pool. In what was midstream in winter was now a low muddy slip thick with grass and reeds, and here two men, Simkin and one of the Fletcher boys, stood astride, one foot on the rooty platform, the other among the reeds. The emptied buckets were being rolled down the bank to the Fletcher boy who plunged them in the pool, pushing them to Simkin who lifted them out and with great swings got them halfway up the bank to Gib. Gib stood mid-bank with one bare foot bent under his body pressing on a wobbling tuft of grass, the other stretched out below, sliding about on the wet earthy slope. He kept his position by his left hand grasping a forked bramble root half pulled from the bank. With a tremendous effort of arm and shoulders he took a full bucket from Simkin and swung it up to where some other boy, kneeling at the top of the bank, could take it and pass it to the chain of six women who themselves passed it to Ed-me-boy up the ladder. At each heave of Gib’s arms the bramble root was pulled a little further from the soft earth. The ladder on which Ed-me-boy stood, was propped against the lowest beams of the cottage. Half the thatch was burnt away, some still smoking thickly but it seemed that by the time Marion arrived, most of the flames were out. While Ed-me-boy paused in his bucket emptying, the long ladder had arrived at the other side of the cottage and Rollo was there ordering the female chain of bucket-carriers round to the other side. This much Marion saw and took in in a second. The whole place was crowded. Everyone was shouting and dogs were barking and frightened children stood in groups. Cecily, who had been helping in the Hall’s dairy all that afternoon, was running up and down, screaming hysterically.

‘I think that’s done it,’ shouted Ed-me-boy, with authority in his new bass voice. ‘Father, get some rakes. We’ll have to get the rest of this thatch off and stamp it out on the ground. It might still flare up. Rob!’ as the tall ladder and the boy’s head appeared over the roof from the far side, ‘Get rakes, get the thatch off! A bit of wind could blaze it up again. Ooh! There go the rats – must have been a nest in the roof. Ah, the dogs have got them.’ There was a yell from the bank as the bramble root finally ripped apart and Gib, waving one earthy end in the air, slithered down the bank and all but pushed Simkin into the water.