Chaff and dross can look green and lush to the covetous eye The orange flames shot up a hundred feet before being swallowed by the smoke and blackness that shrouded the old house in the dead of night. Old boards and plaster along with the bric-a-brac of years of scurrilous living fed the inferno as the heat and consumption intensified its winning battle with the cool air and what was left of a still night. I heard the sirens in the distance and way down across the fields and beyond the neighborhood's rural mail boxes the red flashing lights of Setterville's all- volunteer fire department rushed toward the insidious fire on the hill. Before they could arrive, the searing hot flames burst through the roof of the attached barn and the one hundred and fifty year old farm of Daniel Patrick McCu
