At that moment she heard a cry: 

“Fire! fire! GOD ALMIGHTY HELP THEM,—­THE RUINS ARE ON FIRE!”

A man working over the debris from the outside had taken the notion—­it being rather dark just there—­to carry a lantern with him.

“For God’s sake,” a voice cried from the crowd, “don’t stay there with that light!”

But before the words had died upon the air, it was the dreadful fate of the man with the lantern to let it fall,—­and it broke upon the ruined mass.

That was at nine o’clock.  What there was to see from then till morning could never be told or forgotten.

A network twenty feet high, of rods and girders, of beams, pillars, stairways, gearing, roofing, ceiling, walling; wrecks of looms, shafts, twisters, pulleys, bobbins, mules, locked and interwoven; wrecks of human creatures wedged in; a face that you know turned up at you from some pit which twenty-four hours’ hewing could not open; a voice that you know crying after you from God knows where; a mass of long, fair hair visible here, a foot there, three fingers of a hand over there; the snow bright-red under foot; charred limbs and headless trunks tossed about; strong men carrying covered things by you, at sight of which other strong men have fainted; the little yellow jet that flared up, and died in smoke, and flared again, leaped out, licked the cotton-bales, tasted the oiled machinery, crunched the netted wood, danced on the heaped-up stone, threw its cruel arms high into the night, roared for joy at helpless firemen, and swallowed wreck, death, and life together out of your sight,—­the lurid thing stands alone in the gallery of tragedy.

“Del,” said Sene, presently, “I smell the smoke.”  And in a little while, “How red it is growing away over there at the left!”

To lie here and watch the hideous redness crawling after her, springing at her!—­it had seemed greater than reason could bear, at first.

Now it did not trouble her.  She grew a little faint, and her thoughts wandered.  She put her head down upon her arm, and shut her eyes.  Dreamily she heard them saying a dreadful thing outside, about one of the overseers; at the alarm of fire he had cut his throat, and before the flames touched him he was taken out.  Dreamily she heard Del cry that the shaft behind the heap of reels was growing hot.  Dreamily she saw a tiny puff of smoke struggle through the cracks of a broken fly-frame.

They were working to save her, with rigid, stern faces.  A plank snapped, a rod yielded; they drew out the Scotch girl; her hair was singed; then a man with blood upon his face and wrists held down his arms.

“There’s time for one more!  God save the rest of ye,—­I can’t!”

Del sprang; then stopped,—­even Del,—­stopped ashamed, and looked back at the cripple.

Asenath at this sat up erect.  The latent heroism in her awoke.  All her thoughts grew clear and bright.  The tangled skein of her perplexed and troubled winter unwound suddenly.  This, then, was the way.  It was better so.  God had provided himself a lamb for the burnt-offering.