I say wild hearts and passionate lives, because I think I can look through this seeming calmness of youth and this apparent feebleness of organization, and see that Nature, whom it is very hard to cheat, is only waiting as the sapper waits in his mine, knowing that all is in readiness and the slow-match burning quietly down to the powder.

He will leave it by-and-by, and then it will take care of itself.
One need not wait to see the smoke coming through the roof of a house and the flames breaking out of the windows to know that the building is on fire.

Hark! There is a quiet, steady, unobtrusive, crisp, not loud, but very knowing little creeping crackle that is tolerably intelligible.
There is a whiff of something floating about, suggestive of toasting shingles.

Also a sharp pyroligneous-acid pungency in the air that stings one's eyes.

Let us get up and see what is going on .-- Oh,--oh,--oh! do you know what has got hold of you?
It is the great red dragon that is born of the little red eggs we call sparks, with his hundred blowing red manes, and his thousand lashing red tails, and his multitudinous red eyes glaring at every crack and key-hole, and his countless red tongues lapping the beams he is going to crunch presently, and his hot breath warping the panels and cracking the glass and making old timber sweat that had forgotten it was ever alive with sap.