ith it across the field. In fact, the woman rather thought she
was an evil spirit; for she saw her seize a whole panel of fence--more
rails than she could have carried to save her life, she said, and dashed
with them over the hill.

In Vashti's mind, indeed, it was no time to waste words, she was back
on the bridge with the chunk of fire and an armful of rails before the
woman recovered from her astonishment, and was down on her knees blowing
her chunk to rekindle it. The rails, however, like everything else,
were wet and would not light, and she was in despair. At last she got a
little blaze started, but it would not burn fast; it simply smoked. She
expected the soldiers to come out of the woods every minute, and every
second she was looking up to see if they were in sight. What would Darby
think? What would happen if she failed? She sprang up to look around:
the old rail of the bridge caught her eye; it was rotted, but what
remained was heart and would burn like light-wood. She tore a piece
of it down and stuck one end in the fire: it caught and sputtered and
suddenly flamed up; the next second she was tearing the rail down all
along and piling it on the blaze, and as it caught she dashed back
through the water and up the hill, and brought another armful of rails.
Back and forth she waded several times and piled on rails until she got
a stack of them--two stacks, and the bridge floor dried and caught and
began to blaze; and when she brought her last armful it was burning all
across. She had been so busy bringing wood that she had forgotten to
look across to the other side for some time, and was only reminded of
it as she was wading back with her last armful of rails by something
buzzing by her ear, and the second after the crack of a half-dozen guns
followed from the edge of the wood the other side. She could not see
them well for the burden in her arms, but she made out a number of
horses dashing into the water on the little flat, and saw some puffs of
smoke about their heads. She was bound to put her wood on, however, so
she pushed ahead, went up on the bridge through the smoke as far as she
could go, and flung her rails on the now devouring fire. A sudden veer
of the wind blew the smoke behind her and bent the flames aside, and
she could see clear across the fire to the other bank. She saw a great
number of men on horses at the edge of the woods, in a sort of mass;
and a half-dozen or so in the water riding up to th