A Tangled Web by Lucy Maud Montgomery

The old Moon Man went singing softly through the quiet September night, under a silvery harvest moon. He went along by the dim ghostly shore of the Indian Spring river, past friendly old fields where the wind purred like a big cat, through woods where the trees were talking about him, along lanes where there was a strippling of moonlight on the narrow grassy path and over hills where he paused to listen to eternity. He was very happy and he pitied the poor folks asleep in the houses as he went by. They did not know what they were missing.

It was he who first saw that Dandy Dark's house, perched on the shoulder of a small wooded hill where the road turned down to Bay Silver, was on fire. The flames were already bursting out of the roof of the ell when the Moon Man thundered on the door and a drowsy hired boy shuffled down from the kitchen chamber to demand what was up. The Moon Man told him and then strode calmly off. The fire was no longer any concern of his. He was not going to lose another minute of this beautiful night for it. Behind him he left alarm and confusion. Dandy Dark was away--nobody knew where. Dandy had taken to staying out late at nights, though as yet nobody knew of it except his wife. But the clan at large knew that something had come over Dandy in the past few weeks. He was changed. Unsociable, uneasy, irritable, absent-minded. Some put it down to the fact that the date for the jug decision was drawing near and argued that the decision must be in Dandy's hands, since he was so manifestly uncomfortable about it. Either that, or something had happened to the jug. Nobody dared ask Dandy about it; he positively snapped now if any one referred to the jug. But everybody more or less was beginning to feel uneasy, too. And now Dandy's house was burning. The hired boy had yelled down the hall for Mrs Dandy, had roused a neighbour on the phone and had dashed to the barn for ladders. In an incredibly short time a crowd had gathered, but from the first it was manifest that the house was doomed. They had got out most of the furniture and were grimly watching the spectacle when Dandy arrived home.