se is burning. I ran all the way here. I--"

Margaret and Peggy caught her as she fell forward, and laid her on the
sofa, and while Jean ran for water and Elizabeth, chafed her hands and
her temples, looking the while anxiously at each other.

"Can you tell us what happened?" asked Margaret, trying to keep her
voice quiet and even, for Mrs. Peyton was in the wildest agitation. "You
escaped, thank Heaven! but--is the fire serious? Who is there now? Where
is Grace Wolfe?"

"Don't leave me!" said the sick woman, with a ghastly look. "Margaret,
if you leave me I shall die. She--she went back for the jewels. She is
in the house now."

CHAPTER XIV.

THE FIRE

The three girls reached the door in the same instant, but Mrs. Peyton
followed, and still held Margaret's arm in a desperate clutch.

"Don't leave me!" she repeated. "Margaret, don't leave me to die!"

But Margaret put the clinging hands away. "You are not going to die,"
she said. "You are going to sit down in this chair, Mrs. Peyton, and be
quiet till I come back. See, here is Elizabeth, with water and cologne,
and everything comfortable. By and by you shall go up-stairs, but rest
here now; nothing can happen to you, and I will come back as soon as I
can."

Wondering at her own hardihood, Margaret ran out, shunning the wild
pleading of the beautiful eyes which she knew were bent upon her. Jean
was waiting for her on the step, but Peggy had disappeared.

"She said we were to go on," said Jean, "and she would catch us up.
Which way, Margaret? I don't know the way."

Margaret led the way through the garden, running as she had never run
before. They had not gone a hundred yards when Peggy was at their side.
She had a coil of rope slung over her arm.

"It may be wanted," she said. "I remembered where it always hung. Oh, if
the boys were only here!"

They ran on in silence, Margaret echoing the cry in her heart. At every
step the glare grew brighter, the rolling smoke thicker. Margaret
noticed, and wondered at herself for noticing, that the under side of
some of the leaves above her head shone red like copper, while others
were yellow as gold. Every patch of fern and brake, every leaf of box or
holly, stood out, clear as at noonday.

On, down the long cedar alley, the dew dripping from the branches as
they closed behind them; over the sunk fence, and across the lower
garden to the summer-house, Hugh's summer-house. Once Margaret would
have shuddered