His questing fingers felt shudderingly over the scrap he had detected, passed over a few inches of flooring, and recaptured the same evident textile quality in several more tindery rags.

A pile of tindery branches towers above plates of lamb and sausages that are soon sizzling over the burning vines to provide a succulently rustic lunch on a cool patio, complemented by wines from the hillside where we'd cooked.

He had lain close to the central chimney on the leeward side, and the fire had been fierce enough to burn away all but a few tindery flakes of his clothing, but had passed by too rapidly to take all the flesh from his bones, or even the hair from his head.

Blackened, cracked and dried, a leathern shape hardly recognisable at first sight for a long-toed riding shoe, with a tarnished buckle to fasten it across the instep; and protruding from it, something long and rigid, showing gleams of whitish ivory through fluttering, tindery rags of calcined cloth.