Jonesy had struck out at the wall of fire with his helpless little hands, and then, half-crazed by the scorching pain, dropped to the floor and crawled in the opposite direction, just as the professor burst open the door.

The sight of the poor little blistered face brought the tears to Miss Allison’s eyes, and she called two of the coloured men, directing them to carry Jonesy to the house, and then go at once for a doctor.  But the professor interfered, insisting that Jonesy should be taken to his house.  He said that he knew how to prepare the cooling bandages that were needed, and that he would sit up all night to apply them.  He could not sleep anyhow, he said, after such great excitement.

“But I feel responsible for him,” urged Miss Allison.  “Since it happened on our place, and my little nephews brought him here, it seems to me that we ought to have the care of him.”

The professor waved her aside, lifting Jonesy’s head as tenderly as a nurse could have done, and motioned the coloured men to lift him up.

“No, no, fraulein,” he said.  “I have had eggsperience.  It is besser the poor leedle knabe go mit me!”

There was no opposing the old man’s masterful way.  Miss Allison stepped aside for them to pass, calling after him her willingness to do the nursing he had taken upon himself, and insisting that she would come early in the morning to help.

Unc’ Henry was left to guard the ruins, lest some stray spark should be blown toward the other buildings.  “Dis yere ole niggah wa’n’t mistaken aftah all,” he muttered.  “Dee was somebody prowlin’ ‘roun’ de premises yistiddy evenin’.”  Then he searched the ground, all around the cabin, for footprints in the snow.  He found some tracks presently, and followed them over the meadow in the starlight, across the road, and down the railroad track several rods.  There they suddenly disappeared.  The tramp had evidently walked on the rail some distance.  If Unc’ Henry had gone quarter of a mile farther up the track, he would have found those same sliding imprints on every other crosstie, as if the man had taken long running leaps in his haste to get away.

Jonesy stoutly denied that the man had set fire to the cabin.  “We nearly froze to death that night,” he said, when questioned about it afterward, “and the boss piled on an awful big lot of wood just before he went to bed.”

“Then what made him take to his heels so fast if he didn’t?” some one asked.

“I don’t know,” answered Jonesy.  “He said that luck was always against him, and maybe he thought nobody would believe him if he did say that he didn’t do it.”

Several days after that Malcolm found the tramp’s picture in the Courier-Journal.  He was a noted criminal who had escaped from a Northern penitentiary some two months before, and had been arrested by the Louisville police.  There was no mistaking him.  That big, ugly scar branded him on cheek and forehead like another Cain.