le, the way old Mammy Luke's face used to turn
ashy when she was frightened at her own slave stories, which she was
telling me. The two windows took form, like grey ghosts floating in the
dark, and I knew dawn must be coming; but as I watched the squares
growing more distinct, so that I was sure I saw and didn't imagine them,
a light sprang up. It wasn't the dawn-light, but something vivid and
sudden. I was bewildered, for I'd been in a dozy mood. I flew up, all
dazed and stupid, to patter across the cold, painted floor on my poor
little bare feet.

Our room overlooked the courtyard, and there, almost opposite the window
where I stood, a great column of intense yellow flame was rising like a
fountain of fire--straight as a poplar, and almost as high. I never saw
anything so strange, and I could hardly believe that it wasn't a dream,
until a voice seemed to say inside of me, "Why, it's _your car that's on
fire_!"

In half a second I was sure the voice was right, and at once I was quite
calm. How the car could have got on fire of its own accord was a
mystery, unless it had spontaneous combustion, like that awful old man
of Dickens, who burnt up and left a greasy black smudge; but there was
no time to think, and I only kept saying to myself, as I hurried to slip
on a few clothes (the sketchiest toilet I ever made, just a mere
outline), how lucky it was that my automobile stood in the courtyard
where there was no roof, instead of being in the barn, like Monsieur
Talleyrand's. And I knew that Brown slept in the barn, so that, if it
had happened there, he might have been burnt to death in his sleep,
which made me feel as if I should have to faint away, even to imagine.

But I didn't faint. I tore out of the room, as soon as I was dressed,
with my long, fur-lined motoring coat over my "nighty," and yelled
"Fire!" at the top of my lungs. But I forgot to yell in French, so of
course the farm people couldn't have understood what was the matter,
unless they'd seen the light from their windows. It was still dark in
the shut-up house, but somehow I found my way downstairs, and to the
door by which we'd all come trooping in the evening before. Nobody had
appeared yet (though I fancied I heard Aunt Mary's frantic voice), so I
concluded that the farmer and his wife must be outside in the fields
about their day's work, for these French peasants rise with the dawn, or
before it.

I pulled open the door, and the light of the fire stru