among the trees? What was that leaping, dancing, lambent tongue, shooting up and recoiling? What was that white rising cloud above the thorns?
Before she knew where she was, Mehalah was flying down the hill towards the Strood, the dead Danish warriors forgotten in the agony of her fear. As she ran on, her eyes never left the Ray, and she saw the red light grow in intensity and spread in body. The farm was on fire. The house was on fire, and her mother was in a dead sleep within—locked in—and the key was in her pocket.
O God! what had she done? Why had she gone? Had not the spilled spirits caught fire and set the house in flames? Why had she locked her mother in? a thing never done before. Mehalah ran, terror, horror, anguish at her heart. She did not look at her path, she took it instinctively, she did not heed the rude bridges, she dashed across them, and one broke under her hasty foot, and fell away after she had passed. The flames were climbing higher. She could see them devouring the wooden tarred walls. Then came a great burst of fire, and a rushing upwards of blazing sparks. The roof had fallen in. A pillar of blue and golden light stood up and illumined the whole Ray. The thorntrees looked now like wondrous, finely-ramified, golden seaweeds in a dim blue sea. Mehalah would not pause to look at anything, she saw only flames leaping and raging where was her home, where lay her mother. How could she reach the place before the house was a wreck, and her dear mother was buried beneath the burned timbers of the roof, and the hot broken tiles?
She was there at last, before the great blaze; she could see that some one or two men were present.
"My mother, my mother!" she gasped, and fell on her knees.
"Be still. Glory, she is safe, no thanks to you."
Mehalah lost consciousness for a few moments. The revulsion of feeling was so great as to overcome her. When she recovered, she was still unable for some time to gather all her faculties together, rise, look round, and note what had taken place.
The whole farmhouse was on fire, every wall was flaming, and part of the roof had fallen in. If once the house were
