...of disbelief

Horace ran. Ahead of him he saw other figures running, turning into the alley beside the jail; then he heard the sound of the fire; the furious sound of gasoline. He turned into the alley. He could see the blaze, in the center of a vacant lot where on market days wagons were tethered. Against the flames black figures showed, frantic; he could hear panting shouts; through a fleeting gap he saw a man turn and run, a mass of flames, still carrying a five-gallon coal oil can which exploded with a rocket-like glare while he carried it, running.
He ran into the throng, into the circle which had formed about a blazing mass in the middle of the lot. From one side of the circle came the screams of the man about whom the coal oil can had exploded, but from the central mass of fire there came no sound at all. It was now indistinguishable, the flames whirling in long and thunderous plumes from a white-hot mass out of which there defined themselves faintly the ends of a few posts and planks. Horace ran among them; they were holding him, but he did not know it; they were talking, but he could not hear the voices.
“It’s his lawyer.”
“Here’s the man that defended him. That tried to get him clear.”
“Put him in, too. There’s enough left to burn a lawyer.
“Do to the lawyer what we did to him. What he did to her. Only we never used a cob. We made him wish we had used a cob.”
Horace couldn’t hear them. He couldn’t hear the man who got burned screaming. He couldn’t hear the fire, though it swirled upward unabated, as though it were living upon itself, and soundless: a voice of fury like in a dream, roaring silently out of a peaceful void.

[Sanctuary, Faulkner, W.]