, but secretly
delighted as well that he had done the villainous Yorker no serious
damage.

But the moment after, he shrieked aloud and came again to the top of the
ladder. His face was blanched. "Oh, oh! they've done it--they've done
it!" he cried. "The roof is afire. Don't you smell it?"

Enoch could not believe that this horror was true until he had run up to
the loft. The red flames were already showing at the edge of the house
wall, and the crackling without told him that the bark and binders of
the roof were burning fiercely. "Tear it off!" he shouted, and dropping
his rifle he seized a length of sawed scantling which his father had
brought from the mill, and began to break up the burning roof and cast
it off. But as it fell to the ground against the house, soon the logs
outside were afire. The dwelling was indeed imperiled.

"Come out! come out!" shouted Simon Halpen's voice. "The hut will burn
to the ground an' ye'll burn with it. Ye'll go to Albany jail for this,
every last one of ye!"

"Let me shoot him, mother!" cried Bryce, doubly excited now. "He'll
never take you to jail."

"Come down from the loft, Bryce," the widow commanded, calmly. "Nothing
can save the cabin now."

The children were crying with fear. The red flames began to lick the
edges of the shutters and the door frame was afire. If they escaped they
must pass through a wall of flame. The men outside, frightened by the
result of their awful act, were shouting orders and berating each other
madly. Yet none dared come too near, for they feared the guns of the
defenders of the homestead. Enoch for the moment completely lost his
head and stood as one daft.

But his mother was not so. Swiftly did she sweep aside the ashes on the
hearth. Then of her own exertions she lifted on its edge the flat stone
which covered the underground apartment. There was the ladder the boys
had made leading down into the cool depths. "Down with you--all!" she
commanded, seizing little Harry first and thrusting his feet upon the
ladder.

"Oh, we'll smother down there, mother!" cried Kate.

"Nonsense!" exclaimed the widow, yet with shaking voice. "Do you think
mother would tell you to do anything that would hurt you?"

But though she encouraged them to descend, in her own mind she was
simply choosing the lesser of two terrible evils. The girls and Harry
descended quickly; but she had to fairly force Bryce down. He wanted to
stay and fight, and he clung to the old