Even as they looked, the house tipped perceptibly, and the lighted lamp fell from the table to the floor.
The burning oil was scattered about the room. Although everything was saturated with rain outside, the interior of the cottage began to burn furiously and the conflagration would soon endanger the hotel itself.
Helen broke down and began to cry. Ruth put her arm about her chum and tried to soothe her. Some of the men came charging into the room, thinking by the sudden flare of the conflagration, that this end of the hotel was already on fire.
“Oh, dear! Goodness, me!” shrieked the school teacher, taking thought of her dishabille, and she turned at once and fled upstairs. Mrs. Holloway quietly fainted in an adjacent, comfortable chair. The men went out on the porch to see if they could reach the burning cottage; but the water was too deep and too swift between the two structures.
Ruth carefully attended the woman who had fainted. What had become of Miss Miggs she did not know. Mrs. Holloway regained consciousness very suddenly. She looked up at Ruth, recognized her, and shrank away from the girl of the Red Mill.
“Don’t—don’t,” she gasped. “I’m all right.”
Mrs. Holloway’s hand went to the bosom of her gown, she fumbled there a minute, and then brought forth her purse. The feel of the money in it seemed to reassure her; but Ruth knew what the gesture meant. What she had heard her cousin say had impressed the hotel keeper’s wife strongly.
Hearing the school teacher accuse the two Northern girls of stealing from her, Mrs. Holloway considered herself unsafe in Ruth’s hands.
“Oh, come away,” urged Helen, who had likewise observed the woman’s action. “These people make me ill. I wish we were back North again among our own kind.”
“Hush!” warned Ruth. But in secret she felt justified in making the same wish as her chum.