le groups, or
seated upon the sward, watched the burning house, well pleased to have
some spectacle to relieve the monotony of the night. And they looked
with indolent gratification, passing the light jest and the merry word,
while the red flames kept up their wild sport, and great masses of
rolling vapor upheaved from the crackling roof, and blackened the
midnight sky. None sought to read the mystery of that conflagration. It
was but an old barn gone to ashes a little before its time. Perhaps some
mischievous hand among them had applied the torch for a bit of
deviltry. Perhaps the flames had caught from Rawbon's pipe, which he had
thrown carelessly among a heap of rubbish when startled by Molly's
sudden apparition. Or yet, perhaps, though Heaven forbid it, for the
sake of human nature, the same hand that had struck so nearly fatally
once, had been tempted to complete the work of death in a more terrible
form.

But within those blistering walls, who can tell what ghastly revels the
mad flames were having over their bound and solitary victim! Perhaps, as
she lay there with distended jaws, and eyeballs starting from their
sockets, that brain, amid the visions of its madness, became conscious
of the first kindling of the subtle element that was so soon to clasp
her in its terrible embrace. How dreadful, while the long minutes
dragged, to watch its stealthy progress, and to feel that one little
effort of an unbound hand could avert the danger, and yet to lie there
helpless, motionless, without even the power to give utterance to the
shriek of terror which strained her throat to suffocation. And then, as
the creeping flame became stronger and brighter, and took long and
silent leaps from one object to another, gliding along the lathed, and
papered wall, rolling and curling along the raftered ceiling, would not
the wretched woman, raving already in delirium, behold the spectres that
her madness feared, beckoning to her in the lurid glare, or gliding in
and out among the wild fires that whirled in fantastic gambols around
and overhead! Nearer and nearer yet the rolling flame advances; it
commences to hiss and murmur in its progress; it wreathes itself about
the chairs and tables, and laps up the little pool of brandy spilled
from the forgotten flask; it plays about her feet, and creeps lazily
amid the folds of her gown, yet wet from the brook in which she had
concealed herself that day; it scorches and shrivels up the flesh up