t was cold down there, so Monty and I have made a fire to keep him
warm." The lawyer thought she meant that her dead brother was cold. As
to the fire, when he saw Monty, it did not astonish him; but how came
they both there through the guard?

The frame buildings, their light clapboards dried by the summer sun,
burned furiously, and the flames roared in the rising wind. The sheds
and stables caught; the fire ran over the ground, in spite of the dew,
catching in shrubs and fallen timber, and even climbing up living trees.
Back the beholders were driven, as far as Bill Richards' post, by the
terrible glare and heat of the conflagration. Leaving Bigglethorpe on
sentry, and Rufus over the prisoner, Harry came running up to learn what
was the matter, and to tell of noises like human voices and hammer blows
behind the slab of rock. Then, as the fire in the house burned down to
the ground, there was an explosion that seemed to shake the earth, and a
column of fire sprang up the standing chimney, side by side with another
less lofty and more diffused from the right of the building. Report
after report followed, and the whole party, half terror-stricken,
descended to the beach. Rufus, with Bigglethorpe's help, had
considerately transferred his prisoner to the punt, and guarded him
there. The store-keeper, taking chisel and mallet in hand, was striking
off chip after chip of rock, in answer to muffled cries from within; and
now the big rock had moved half an inch. Still the brave man worked away
amid the continued explosions, and in spite of the advancing fire. The
block continued to slide, and Bigglethorpe cried: "Take the boats out of
the way, and get back from me, or you will all be crushed in a minute."
The punt was out of danger, but Bill Richards, with a single movement,
shoved off the skiff, and, kneeling on her stern, sent her far out into
the lake. Then he rowed the boat rapidly back into a place of safety.
The slab was still sliding, and had cleared the rock out of which it had
been cut by an inch. A human hand was thrust out, a dumpy, beringed
hand, bleeding with the effort; a most audible voice cried "For God's
sake, 'urry!" and then there came a perfect Babel of explosions, and the
gallant deliverer was forcibly drawn out of a fierce river of liquid
fire that streamed down into the lake, and burned even out on the water.
The fisherman was badly burnt, hair, beard and eyelashes almost singed
off; but still he thought o