hoped that nobody would come home too soon, before the house
was really burning, was burning like mad!

She still worried. Concealed by the grove of fir-trees, the village was
now out of her sight. Was the house still burning, was it really still
burning?

She ran and panted uphill. Up, up to the pasture! There she could see,
there--

"Ah!" A long scream of insane delight arose tumultuously from her
breast. There the village lay at her feet. A thick cloud of smoke had
settled down upon it. But now, now--ah!--now there was a red flame
shooting through the cloud! It divided, a whirlwind was blowing in it,
fiery tongues stuck up, gigantic, joyously bright, and lapped to the
right, and lapped to the left, and united, and flowed into one another,
and grew longer and broader--became a fiery ribbon that unrolled more
and more and speedily wound itself out as if from a spool.

With wide-staring eyes the woman gazed: Jesus, that was a fire--that
was a fire!

It was a long while ago that Widow Driesch's cottage was the only one
on fire. Dried by the drought and the ardent sun, the thatched roofs
had been kindled like tinder. Now the cottages were burning, four,
five. But as though this were not enough, the wind got behind and blew
air into the flames. The conflagration swept down one whole side of the
village; in ghostly haste the flames leaped from gable to gable. Like
mats rolled together by a scrupulous hand, the thatched roofs curled
up; first they sizzled, then they flared, but then--hi!--the ripe
grain, every kernel a spark, exploded like powder and shot sheaves of
fire into the air. A noisome exhalation mounted to the heavens and
darkened the sky; from the stables came the desperate cries of the
confined animals.

Katherine Driesch did not hear the wretched bellowing of the creatures
dying in the flames. She did not hear the cries which suddenly like an
alarm were wafted to her from far down in the fields. She did not hear
the crashing of beams and walls--she merely saw. Saw, with triumphant
eyes, a wild, undulating tempest of flame, a glow, gigantic, blotting
out the sunshine with its redness, a torch, tall as a pine-tree,
brandished by the wind and flaring up to heaven, up to the eternal
throne of the Most Merciful.

The mother fell to her knees upon the pasture, upon the green grazing
ground of the herds, and stretched wide her arms and clasped them
together again, as though she were taking some one to her hea