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Very carefully he put up his hands and took off his hat saying CHIEF and while everyone watched he walked slowly down the steps and over to the fire engine and set his hat down on the front seat. Then he bent down, searching thoughtfully, and finally, while everyone watched, he took up a rock. In complete silence he turned slowly and then raised his arm and smashed the rock through one of the great tall windows of our mother's drawing room. A wall of laughter rose and grew behind him and then, first the boys on the steps and then the other men and at last the women and the smaller children, they moved like a wave at our house.

In Chapter 8, Jim Donell, the fire chief, helps to put the fire out even as villagers call to him to let the house burn. When he is done, he removes his hat and throws a rock through the window, becoming the catalyst for the destruction that follows. As fire chief, he has an obligation to stop the fire burning; when he removes his hat, symbolically he becomes a private citizen, a part of the anonymous mob crowded around the Blackwood home. In throwing the rock, he sets off a storming of the home that is as dangerous and difficult to contain as a fire.

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