s heard another sound,--a
spiteful snapping and crackling, faint but increasing. Can the
air be borne?--it is hard to breathe; and flame, yes, flame is
leaping from the dried leaves and curling out here and there
from a tree. Mrs. Saddler put her head out of the coach.

'Oh, sir!' she shrieked, 'he is taking us right into it! O
stop him! we'll be burned, sure! it's all fire--it's all fire!'

The chorus of shrieks became now almost a worse storm within
than the tempest of fire which was raging without. The women
were wild. It was an awful moment for everybody. The fire had
full possession on both sides of the road, viciously sparkling
and crackling and throwing out jets of flames and volumes of
smoke, threatening to dispute the way with the stage coach;
yet through it lay the only way to safety. It could not be
borne long; the horses, urged by a hand that knew how to apply
all means of stimulus and spared none, drew the coach along at
a furious speed. The speed alone was distracting to the poor
women, who had never known the like; the coach seemed to them,
doubtless, hastening to destruction. Their shrieks were
uncontrollable; and indeed no topics of comfort could be
urged, when manifestly they were fleeing for their lives from
the fire, and the fire on every side, before and behind them
was threatening with fearful assertion of power that they
should not escape. How swiftly thoughts careered through the
mind of the one silent member of the company--thoughts like
those quick flashed of flame, those dark curls of smoke. The
questions she had been debating two hours before--were they all
to have one short, sharp answer?--And what would become of her
then? Were such days as the one before yesterday forever
ended? How would it feel to be caught and wreathed about like
one of those pines--how would Mr. Rollo feel to see it--and what
if all the rest should be dead, there in the fire, and she
only half dead; together with a strange impatience to know the
worst and endure the worst. She had drawn back a little from
the window, driven in by the scorching air, but looked out
still with both hands up to shield her eyes. She did not know
into what pitiful lines her mouth had shaped itself, nor what
faintness and sickness were creeping over her with every
breath of that smoke. The time was, after all, not long; but
in the thickest of the fire, when the smoke literally choked
up the way before the horses' eyes, the animals sudden