Trust Cossar to build a fire! A great column of smoke, shot with blood-red tongues and darting flashes, rushed up into the sky.

It was like some huge giant suddenly standing up, straining upward and abruptly spreading his great arms out across the sky.

It cast the night back upon them, utterly hiding and obliterating the incandescence of the sun that rose behind it.

All Hickleybrow was soon aware of that stupendous pillar of smoke, and came out upon the crest, in various _deshabille_, to watch them coming.
Behind, like some fantastic fungus, this smoke pillar swayed and fluctuated, up, up, into the sky--making the Downs seem low and all other objects petty, and in the foreground, led by Cossar, the makers of this mischief followed the path, eight little black figures coming wearily, guns shouldered, across the meadow.
As Bensington looked back there came into his jaded brain, and echoed there, a familiar formula.

What was it?
"You have lit to-day--?
You have lit to-day-- ?" Then he remembered Latimer's words: "We have lit this day such a candle in England as no man may ever put out again--" What a man Cossar was, to be sure! He admired his back view for a space, and was proud to have held that hat.