ciless, for once launched
into talk he kept on till I was almost wild with hateful sympathy and
jealous chagrin. Suddenly he paused.

The forest we had been threading had for the last few minutes been
growing thinner, and as the quick cessation in his speech caused me to
look up, I saw, or thought I saw, a faint glow shining through the
branches before me, which could not have come from the reflection
made by the setting sun, as that had long ago sunk into darkness.

Orrin who, as he had ceased speaking, had suddenly reined in his
panting horse, now gave a shout and shot forward, and I, hardly
knowing what to fear or expect, followed him as fast as my evidently
weary animal would carry me, and thus bounding along with but a few
paces between us, we cleared the woods and came out into the open
fields beyond. As we did so a cry went up from Orrin, faintly echoed
by my own lips. It was a fire that we saw, and the flames, which had
now got furious headway, rose up like pillars to the sky, illuminating
all the country round, and showing me, both by their position and the
glare of the stream beneath them, that it was Orrin's house which was
burning, and Orrin's hopes which were being destroyed before our eyes.
The cry he gave as he fully realized this I shall never forget, nor
the gesture with which he drove his spurs into his horse and flashed
down that long valley into the ever-increasing glare that lighted
first his flowing hair and the wet flanks of the animal he bestrode,
and finally seemed to envelop him altogether, till he looked like some
avenging demon rushing through his own element of fury and fire.

I was far behind him, but I made what time I could, feeling to the
core, as I passed, the weirdness of the solitude before me, with just
this element of horror flaming up in its midst. Not a sound save that
of our pounding hoofs interrupted that crackling sound of burning
wood, and when the roof fell in, as it did before I could reach his
side, I could hear distinctly the echo which followed it. Orrin may
have heard it too, for he gave a groan and drew in his horse, and when
I reached him I saw him sitting there before the smouldering ashes of
his home, silent and inert, without a word to say or an ear to hear
the instinctive words of sympathy I could not now keep back.

Who had done it? Who had started the blaze which had in one half-hour
undone the work and hope of months? That was the question which first
roused