The Fiery Test

"I do not need your services," he said to the negro, who departed,
having first lighted the gas and turned it on to its fullest
extent out of compliment to the blind man.

Gas was a luxury not quite two years old in Shannondale, and had
been put in Arthur's house just before he left for Florida.
Collingwood being further from the village could not boast of it
yet and consequently Richard was not as much accustomed to it as
he would otherwise have been. On this occasion he did not know
that it was lighted until, as he stood by the dressing bureau, he
felt the hot air in his face. Thinking to extinguish the light by
turning the arm of the fixture just as he remembered having done
some years before, he pushed it back within an inch of the heavy
damask curtain which now shaded the window, and too much absorbed
in his own painful reflections to think of ascertaining whether
the light was out or not, he groped his way to the single bed, and
threw himself upon it, giving way to a paroxysm of grief.

It was strange that one in his frame of mind should sleep, but
nature was at last exhausted, and yielding to the influence of the
peculiar atmosphere slowly pervading the room, he fell away into a
kind of lethargic slumber, while the work of destruction his own
hand had prepared, went silently on around him. First the crimson
curtain turned a yellowish hue, than the scorched threads dropped
apart and the flame crept into the inner lining of cotton, running
swiftly through it until the whole was in a blaze, and the wood-
work of the window, charred and blackened, and bore the deadly
element still onward, but away from the unconscious Richard,
leaving that portion of the room unscathed, and for the present
safe. Along the cornice under the lathing, beneath the eaves they
crept--those little fiery tongues--lapping at each other in
wanton, playfulness, and whispering to the dry old shingles on the
roof above of the mischief they meant to do.