chimneys little tongues of flame leaped up as she approached. She
could hear a fierce crackling, too, of that spiteful sort made by the
burning of dry wood. The house was all of wood, and old, and it was
evidently thoroughly afire within.

She realized this as she hurried up to it. In the brief seconds of her
crossing the field and leaping a small stream that ran near the house,
she thought of Jason, so noble, so self-denying, so persecuted, so
beautiful, lying there in his little upper room, powerless from the
fever, and doomed to die a dreadful death. She thought of him, weak and
helpless, with no strength even to shrink from the flames that should
lap over him and lick him to death with their fiery tongues. All this as
she sped across the field and leaped the stream.

Reaching the house, she glanced upward, and could perceive the light of
the flames already showing itself through the upper front windows, next
the room where slept the Deacon and his wife. Fortunately Jason's room
was in the rear. Then she remembered that an old nurse from the village
watched with him, and she called fiercely on her name, but with no
response.

As she had approached the house, the nearest outer door was that facing
the road, immediately over which the fire was evidently about to break
out, and this door she tried, finding it fast. Then she remembered a
side entrance, through an old wood-shed, that was seldom locked, and she
immediately made her way to it.

Meanwhile the fire was busy with the dry wood-work of the house, and
though there was no wind, it spread with fearful rapidity. Already the
flames had burst out through the roof in two or three places, and in the
front of the house they were cruelly curling and creeping about the
eaves. They seemed confined, however, to the upper portion of the
building, and therein she had hope.

As she had anticipated, she found the side door unfastened, and she made
her way rapidly to the foot of the back stairway. When she opened the
door to ascend, a thick, black smoke rushed down, almost overpowering
her. The opening of the door seemed to aid the fire, too, and there was
a sort of explosive eagerness in the new start it took as it now
crackled and roared above her. Then she recognized in the sickening
smoke a smell of burning feathers, and she felt faint and weak as she
thought that it might be _his_ bed that was on fire.

This was only for an instant. Staggering backward before the clou