'
Up went the gardener again with the lantern, and let it down the hole
cautiously. They saw the yellow light upon his face as he bent over, and
saw his face struck with an incredulous terror and loathing before he
cried out in a dreadful voice and fell back from the ladder--where,
happily, he was caught by two of the men--letting the lantern fall inside
the tree.
He was in a dead faint, and it was some time before any word could be got
from him.
By then they had something else to look at. The lantern must have broken
at the bottom, and the light in it caught upon dry leaves and rubbish
that lay there for in a few minutes a dense smoke began to come up, and
then flame; and, to be short, the tree was in a blaze.
The bystanders made a ring at some yards' distance, and Sir William and
the Bishop sent men to get what weapons and tools they could; for,
clearly, whatever might be using the tree as its lair would be forced out
by the fire.
So it was. First, at the fork, they saw a round body covered with
fire--the size of a man's head--appear very suddenly, then seem to
collapse and fall back. This, five or six times; then a similar ball
leapt into the air and fell on the grass, where after a moment it lay
still. The Bishop went as near as he dared to it, and saw--what but the
remains of an enormous spider, veinous and seared! And, as the fire
burned lower down, more terrible bodies like this began to break out from
the trunk, and it was seen that these were covered with greyish hair.
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