"Your stick is burning."

"So is your hearth, sir." And with this he gave a good hard jab into the heart of the fire and Piggott watched dumbly as the burning logs were knocked onto his dining room floor and the charred walking stick was stabbed again and again into the hearth as if it were a spear to kill a dragon.

"You see, Piggott," his lordship said. He was having a great old time, careless of the choking smoke, the soot on both his face and hands. As for his silver stick, he now reversed it so he could use it like a navvy's crowbar.

"You see," he said, and-completely indifferent to the heat and burning wood, thrust in his hand like a farmer at a calving and drew into the light a fistful of smoldering currency-not assignats.

The dreadful Lord Devon, who was later paid a bung by Mr. Pitt for services to king and country, held up his treasure-pale white notes carrying the promise of the Stockton and Cleveland Bank to hand over five pounds of gold for each and every one.

Behind my back I heard a noise, and turned to see both Piggotts on the floor, poor devils, him kneeling, her curled up in a ball, her stockings showing.

AS A LIZARD drops its tail to save its life, so must the Parrot sacrifice his sleeve to escape Lord Devon's grip. Out the door I fled into the inky evening, not a living soul in sight except the house martins scything across the sky. I stumbled coughing, spitting, down the dark side of the mansion, flushing a quail from beneath the pussy willow. The bird was much more wily than the boy, for while I was heading straight for Watkins' secret hole, she pretended a broken wing and hobbled and fluttered toward the river, intending to lead me away from her nest.

I had reached the stinging nettles, just before the door, when the designated wicket keeper caught me.

Mr. Benjamin dropped on me like a spider, wrapping his huge hands around my chest, binding me to him, so close I could smell the inside of his nose.

"Got you," he cried.

The Parrot slid right through his nasty knot, surrendering the remainder of his shirt. I feinted toward the house, cut back toward the river, crashed through the pussy willow where Mr. Poole was waiting for me.

"Got you."

He had fair hair and blue eyes and a red blush to his cheeks like a toy soldier. He was slight but as hard and stitched together as the leather casing of a ball, and though I kicked and spat and scratched at him, there was no escape from the bony shackle around my wrist.

"I'll break your frigging arm," he said.

"Where is he?" That was Lord Devon, hollering from the steps.

"Here sir," called Poole, dragging me brutally, skidding me on my knees, a half-skun hare.

"Not him, you fool!" Lord Devon had a captive of his own-Mrs. Piggott-tripping and stumbling after him. "Not him, not him!"

"Who sir?"

"Try to remember," cried Lord Devon. "Lord Jesus save me, whom did we come to get?"

"Piggott sir? Where is he?"

"I do not know," his lordship cried, advancing with his still-burning stick. Poole jerked me backward and away. The red-waistcoated dervish continued closing and was only halted by an awful bang. Deus ex machina, as they say. And what a machina-a hot wash of light bathed his lordship's upturned face and there, for all to see, his cold gleaming rage was caught and held by a writhing rope of fire running along the ridgeline of the house.

"Shit," cried the member of the House of Lords, and I had time to be astonished he would speak like that.

The printers came running down their stairs, tumbling into the evening, walking backward, faces illuminated, necks craned, their gazes on the smoking humpback ridge. The first line of flame had died, but what was left behind were three conflagrations, flames bursting from three beds of tiles.

Mr. Benjamin clipped me across the ears. The show continued-exploding squibs now bloomed like wildflowers in the gloom. These also whacked my eardrum, five times, as hard as anvils. Then came bursts of fire, broken tiles erupting from hips and valleys and places not in my view.

The sky was now a cloudless shade of green and as Benjamin dragged me from the hail of heavy tiles, I feared for Mr. Watkins' life. Poor Watkins-he had dreaded fire above all things, and now there were at least eight separate fires all erupting from his roof. Then-from where I do not know-a great flock of bats burst forth, and in among the bats, at first almost indistinguishable from them, a thousand sheets of paper tipped with Pentecostal tongues. It was as if Piggott's brain had exploded through its bony casing and all its greed and argumentative confusion, its secrets and whispers and smugglers' boats, had burst in smithereens and scattered through the darkening air, landing like stinging wasps upon our arms and faces, and through all of this my captor was transfixed, as if he had seen the assumption of the Virgin Mary in the Devon sky.

All nature was disturbed. The nightjars, who would have normally stayed quiet till dark, came diving and flapping around their territories, swooping down above Lord Devon's smoking wig. In flight they made a soft coohwick and a dreadful hand-clapping with their panicked wings. The printers were equally disturbed, shouting, running to the stream with buckets.

I politely asked to be let go.

Poole knew not what to do. He watched Lord Devon who, like someone drunk or dreaming, stared at the men carrying water into the house.

Then came a great soft thump like a chaff bag thrown out of a loft.

"Good God," cried Poole.

On the ground beside the steps I saw the broken body of a man. It was Piggott. When Benjamin dragged me to his side I saw the printer's big white carcass twisted like a doll, his eyes wide open, the most horrific look of triumph on his face. This expression was not diminished one iota by the wailing of his wife to whom he spoke impatiently. "Marie, il n'y a plus aucune preuve ici. Tout est brule."

Lord Devon quickly decided Mrs. Piggott was worth not a damn to him. He set her free to moan.

"Fool," he cried to Piggott, as burning five-pound notes fell to the dark ground like cherry blossom. "Fool, it is raining evidence." Then: "Let the house burn," he ordered the printers, but they were Jacobins and they hated him and all his kind.

Understanding his position, Devon rushed to his carriage, from which he produced a heavy tangle of chain and threw it hard against the ground.

"That's one lesson for you," he shouted at the men.

He disappeared for a moment and emerged waving two pistols. "And here's another." One of these pistols was quickly taken by Benjamin while Devon confronted the bucket brigade with the other.

"What's that you say?" he cried. "What's that?"

He struck Bunter on the shoulder and, by dint of a great deal of barrel-poking, "persuaded" the bucket brigade to stand in line while he walked up and down, reviewing them like grenadiers.

Not once taking his eyes off his captives, he ordered Benjamin to pass Poole his pistol so the latter's hands were free to fetter these good men's ankles with the chain.

While Devon snatched evidence from the sky, my flame-licked father smiled at me. He shrugged, dear man, dear father.

"Come," called Devon to Poole. "You can help as well. You're not a bloody nursemaid."

"But I have the boy," said Poole.

"Yes, yes, yes," cried Devon.

My daddy was tossing his head at me, as if he had a flea in his ear.

"I have the boy, sir," said Poole.

"Devil," Lord Devon said, "I will blow your brains out if you move."

"Yes sir," I said.

Chooka tossed his head. He meant that I should flee.

"Run," my father cried.

Devon swung around. But now Poole shrieked. He pointed, and who-even Lord Devon-could not follow his gaze? A fiery angel had appeared upon the roof, its hair ablaze and streaming upward, fire right down its spine. It ran along the ridge and flew into the air, smashing into an old oak through whose ancient branches it crashed nosily before passing out of sight. Three others followed, forgers rising like hatchlings in the night, their cries beyond the edge of nightmare.