ing all about staring down at her. They were people she knew,
she thought, yet they all looked so funny. Someone was kneeling beside
her, but in a strange red glow which seemed to light up the darkness, she
could not recognise the face. Her eyelids fell, in spite of herself, but
she managed to open them again very soon, and this time she saw the black
sky high above her; rain fell on her face. The red glow went up and down;
sometimes it was brilliant, sometimes it almost disappeared, and all the
time there was a strange crackling, hissing noise going on, and a horrible
smell.

By degrees she felt a little less dazed and helpless. She tried to put
out her hands to raise herself, but she could not move them. They were
fastened to her sides. She saw then that she was wrapped in a blanket.

"What--ever--has happened!" she asked sharply.

"There has been an accident--a fire. Your house is on fire--didn't you
know?"

"Fire!--our house--on fire!" Mona sat upright, and looked about her in a
bewildered way. Could it be that she was having those dreadful things
said to her. She had often wondered how people felt, what they thought--
what they did, when they had suddenly to face so dreadful a thing.

"Where's granny?" she asked abruptly--almost violently.

There was a moment's silence. Then Patty Row's mother said in a
breathless, hesitating way, "Nobody--no one knows yet, Mona. Nor how the
house was set on fire," she added, hastily, as though anxious to give Mona
something else to think of. "Some say the wind must have blown down the
kitchen chimney and scattered some red-hot coals about the floor."

"But 'twas the top part of the house that was burning first along," broke
in old Tom Harris. "Mrs. Carne saw smoke and fire coming through the
bedroom windows and the roof."

"The top part!--where granny was sleeping!" Mona threw open the blanket
and struggled to her feet. "Oh, do stop talking, and tell me--hasn't
anyone found granny?" Her question ended almost in a scream.

"They--they're getting her----" said somebody. The rest preserved an
ominous silence.

"There's a chain of men handing up buckets of water through the back
garden," said someone else, as though trying to distract her thoughts.
"They'll soon get the fiercest of the fire down."

"But--but think of granny. We can't wait for that. She's in the fire all
this time. She was in bed. Hasn't anyone been to her? Oh, they must
have. They can