‘I see you throw down the lantern to take the gun outen his hand,’ Henry said.

‘Is that how you see it? That must ’a’ been how it was. I taken the lantern to get together my stuff. I allowed to go sometime tonight and let old Mrs Wingate send the hay money after me. I threw down the lantern to take away the gun outen his hand.’

Henry said that he would go to help but that Jasper had better stay in hiding. The fire rose to its greatest volume with the burning of the straw which had been stored in the loft, but after this blast of flame the wooden members continued to burn. Jasper sat on the ground in the heart of the thicket, sullen and dazed, staring at the flames as they sank slowly away. From her place of watching Ellen saw the people carrying water to save the other buildings, and she told Jasper who were there, the Stigalls, the Donahues, the Whelens, Tarbell, and people from further away. The strange light made menacing shapes stand out of the tree shadows and out of the ragged cornfield, long arms and stooped shoulders, bent spines and lurching knees moved through the grove, and Jasper sat on the ground mingling his oaths with his breath. He sat staring at the ground, and from time to time he would declare that he was a ruined man. ‘I burned up that-there barn,’ he whispered, ‘but it was unknowen to me. I never planned on such. I never. That-there lantern burned up the stable. But Albert, he crowded on me with the gun and I flung down the light and it was unknowen to me what went with it.’

They went away into Henry’s field again and walked off toward the high place above the quarry, their heads bowed and their steps weary.

‘You couldn’t know,’ Ellen said.

‘I burned that-there barn,’ he muttered, over and over. ‘I burned it.’ He went crookedly along the brow of the pasture. They waited at the top of the zigzag path Ellen’s cow took to descend beside the cliff, and after a while Henry came, for the fire had died away to a pink glow on the sky low in the northwest. People were saying that Jasper burned the barn in spite; this was the story that was freely told at the fire; Henry brought word of it when he came.

‘Albert says you put the lantern into the straw,’ Henry said. ‘He said you set off the straw for spite-work.’

They stood in the deep shadows at the foot of the cliff and pondered the disaster, searching it for its right and wrong.

‘They say you put the horse in the barn on purpose to burn it. You went to the pasture and fetched in the horse and fastened it in. The horse burned in the barn.’

‘Old Don burned up.’

‘He says you put up the horse on purpose to burn it, says you put up old Don. Said every time he tried to put out the blaze you fought him offen it.’ Jasper walked up and down along the base of the quarry, stumbling over the rocks. Ellen tried to push her knowing through his knowing to try to see as he had seen and to penetrate the interval when she had gone down the thicket. Whatever he had done was necessary and inevitable in her thought. The light had shone through the chinks and then it had gone. She tried to assume his chaos of anger and his confusion and to bring her more ordered knowing to it. She walked beside him as he paced along the stones or she stood beside him if he leaned against the wall, or if he sat on the ground she kept near, her shoulder touching his shoulder.