d of
smoke, with outstretched, groping hands, like one suddenly struck blind,
an 'instinct,' or what you please to call it, struck her, and she tore
off her flannel petticoat, wrapping it about her head and shoulders.
Then, holding her hands over mouth and nose, she rushed desperately up
the stairs.

No one, unless he has been through such a smoke, can conceive of the
trials she had to undergo in mounting those stairs. No one can fancy,
except from the recollection of such an experience, how the fierce heat
beat her back when she reached the upper hall. The walls were not yet
fully on fire, but great tongues of flame curled along the ceiling, and
hot blasts swept across her path.

She knew his room. It was but a step to it, and the door opened easily.
The nurse was fast asleep, so fast that poor Hannah's warning cry, as
she stumbled in, hardly aroused her. On the bed lay Jason, so thin, so
white, so corpse-like, she would hardly have known him. In the fierce
strength of her despair it was no task to lift that emaciated body, but,
ah! how to get out of the house with it? For when she turned she saw
that the hall was now wholly on fire.

But she did not hesitate. Wrapping him quickly and tenderly in a blanket
taken from the bed, she rushed out into the flames.

Meanwhile Peter Hopkins and his 'hired man' had been aroused by Hannah's
first screams, and had hurriedly scrambled on a portion of their
clothing and rushed out. They had been in time--running quickly across
the field--to see Hannah disappear behind the house. Neither of them
supposed for an instant that she had entered it.

Trying the front door, and finding it fast, Peter uplifted his stout
foot and kicked it crashing in, but he found it impossible to enter by
the breach he had made. The front stairway was all in flames, and the
fierce heat drove him hopelessly back. Then they ran around to the rear.
By this time the entire upper portion of the building seemed to be one
mass of fire and smote, and now they could hear shrill and terrible
shrieks, evidently proceeding from the suddenly awakened inmates. They
ran to the kitchen door and burst it in.

As they did so there rushed towards them from the foot of the kitchen
stairs some horrible, blazing, and unnatural shape, that came stumbling
but swiftly forward. With it came smoke and flame and a horrible sound
of stifled moans.

At the approach of this strange and unsightly object they sprang back
amazed, a