moaning whinny of fright broke from him. But he
felt the steady, strong little hands in his mane and he plunged on
again, through the smoke and out into the good air.

The fire laughed and leaped across the road behind them. It had missed
them, but it did not care. The other way, it would not have cared,
either.

Ruth eased Brom Bones up a little on the long slope of the hill, and
turning looked back at her home. The farmer had long since gone away
with his family. The place was not his. The flames were already
leaping up from the grass to the windows and the roof was taking fire
from the cinders and burning branches in the air. But, where
everything was burning, where a whole countryside was being swept with
the broom of destruction, her personal loss did not seem to matter
much.

Only when she saw the flames sweep on past the house and across the
hillside and attack the trees that stood guard over the graves of her
loved ones did the bitterness of it enter her soul. She revolted at
the cruel wickedness of it all. Her heart hated the fire. Hated the
men who had set it. (She was sure that men _had_ set it.) She wanted
vengeance. The Bishop was wrong. Why should he interfere? Let men take
revenge in the way of men.

But on the instant she was sorry and breathed a little prayer of and
for forgiveness. You see, she was rather a downright young person. And
she took her religion at its word. When she said, "Forgive us our
trespasses," she meant just that. And when she said, "As we forgive
those who trespass against us," she meant that, too.

The Bishop was right, of course. One horror, one sin, would not heal
another.

Coming to the top of the hill, the full wonder and horror of the fire
burst upon her with appalling force. What she had so far seen was but
a little finger of the fire, crooked around a hill. Now in front and
to the right of her, in an unbroken quarter circle of the whole
horizon, there ranged a living, moving mass of flame that seemed to be
coming down upon the whole world.

She knew that it was already behind her. If she had thought of
herself, she would have turned Brom Bones to the left, away from the
road and have fled away, by paths she knew well, to the north and out
of the range of the moving terror. But only for one quaking little
moment did she think of herself. Along that road ahead of her there
was a man, a good man, who rode bravely, unquestioningly, to almost
certain death, for others.