Do you hear me ?" She heard his feet passing, heard them upon the scattered boards near the door, then muffled in the grass.

She could not guess what he was about.
He went to the edge of the standing grass beyond the dooryard, and began sowing, broadcast, spikes, nails, bits of iron, intended to ruin the sickle blades of the mowers when they came to work.

Even he thrust a spike or bolt here or there upright in the ground to catch a blade.
Mary Warren where she sat knew none of this, but she heard a sound presently which she could not mistake--the crackling of fire! The scent of it came to her nostrils.

The man had fired the meager remnants of Sim Gage's hay stacks.
She heard next a shot or two, but could not tell what they meant.

She could not know that he was firing into the dumb, gaunt cattle which hung about the ricks.
Then later she heard something which caused her very soul to shiver, made her blood run ice--the shrieking scream of a horse in death agony--the hoarser braying of a mule, both dying amid fire! She did not understand it, could not have guessed it; but he had set fire also to the stables.