The smoke still rose sombre and heavy from the roof, and about one of the chimneys little tongues of flame leaped up as she approached.  She could hear a fierce crackling, too, of that spiteful sort made by the burning of dry wood.  The house was all of wood, and old, and it was evidently thoroughly afire within.

She realized this as she hurried up to it.  In the brief seconds of her crossing the field and leaping a small stream that ran near the house, she thought of Jason, so noble, so self-denying, so persecuted, so beautiful, lying there in his little upper room, powerless from the fever, and doomed to die a dreadful death.  She thought of him, weak and helpless, with no strength even to shrink from the flames that should lap over him and lick him to death with their fiery tongues.  All this as she sped across the field and leaped the stream.

Reaching the house, she glanced upward, and could perceive the light of the flames already showing itself through the upper front windows, next the room where slept the Deacon and his wife.  Fortunately Jason’s room was in the rear.  Then she remembered that an old nurse from the village watched with him, and she called fiercely on her name, but with no response.

As she had approached the house, the nearest outer door was that facing the road, immediately over which the fire was evidently about to break out, and this door she tried, finding it fast.  Then she remembered a side entrance, through an old wood-shed, that was seldom locked, and she immediately made her way to it.

Meanwhile the fire was busy with the dry wood-work of the house, and though there was no wind, it spread with fearful rapidity.  Already the flames had burst out through the roof in two or three places, and in the front of the house they were cruelly curling and creeping about the eaves.  They seemed confined, however, to the upper portion of the building, and therein she had hope.

As she had anticipated, she found the side door unfastened, and she made her way rapidly to the foot of the back stairway.  When she opened the door to ascend, a thick, black smoke rushed down, almost overpowering her.  The opening of the door seemed to aid the fire, too, and there was a sort of explosive eagerness in the new start it took as it now crackled and roared above her.  Then she recognized in the sickening smoke a smell of burning feathers, and she felt faint and weak as she thought that it might be his bed that was on fire.

This was only for an instant.  Staggering backward before the cloud of smoke, with outstretched, groping hands, like one suddenly struck blind, an ‘instinct,’ or what you please to call it, struck her, and she tore off her flannel petticoat, wrapping it about her head and shoulders.  Then, holding her hands over mouth and nose, she rushed desperately up the stairs.

No one, unless he has been through such a smoke, can conceive of the trials she had to undergo in mounting those stairs.  No one can fancy, except from the recollection of such an experience, how the fierce heat beat her back when she reached the upper hall.  The walls were not yet fully on fire, but great tongues of flame curled along the ceiling, and hot blasts swept across her path.