Just at the threshold of the barn she felt herself shoved aside and hurled several feet out of harm's way. She fell backward on the ground and lay still. It was David who had flung her from the reach of the fire's scorching heat and plunged into the barn in her stead.
The crowd watched the brave young man in horrified silence. Seconds that seemed ages passed. The front of the barn collapsed. Madge felt Mr. Preston seize her and drag her away with him, but not before she and all the watchers had caught sight of David. He stood in the far corner of the barn with his coat thrown over the terrified horse's head. His face was almost unrecognizable through the smoke, but the ringing tones of his voice urging the old horse forward could be heard above the crackling wood.
"Hurrah!" shouted Mr. Preston hoarsely. He almost trampled over Madge, who was sitting on the ground staring wildly at David. Then she saw Mr. Preston and a half dozen other men pick David up on their shoulders and bear him away from the crowd, while two of the farm-hands took charge of old Fanny.
David's burns, though not serious, were painful. His hands and arms were severely blistered. But the excitement occasioned by the fire had hardly passed when it was discovered that during the fire some one had entered the Preston house and had stolen a quantity of old family silver. Miss Betsey Taylor's money bag, which she had carefully concealed under the day pillow on her four-post mahogany bed, had also disappeared.
There would probably never be any way to discover how or when the thief entered the house. There had been more than a hundred visitors about the place, and the house had been open for hours. During the fire every one of the servants had rushed into the yard.
There was also another disturbing fact to be considered. Either before or after the fire the old gypsy woman, who had unexpectedly appeared to take the character part of old Nokomis in the Hiawatha recitation, had completely vanished; also, the two men disguised as Indian braves had gone.
The Prestons and their guests discussed all these pertinent features of the affair until long after midnight. Miss Betsey wept and mourned over the loss of her money bag, and dolefully repeated that she wished she had never, never heard of a houseboat. The four girls and Miss Jenny Ann became thoroughly disgusted with the disgruntled spinster's selfish bewailing of her own loss, when the Prestons, who had met with a much heavier loss, were heroically making light of their misfortune.
Madge also had a private grievance, one that was quite her own. David had behaved roughly, almost brutally, toward her when she had tried to dash into the burning barn. She decided that she did not in the least like David, and that she was not at all grateful to him for literally hurling her out of harm's way.
As for David himself, he had slipped away from the men who had borne him in triumph on their shoulders and, in spite of the pain of his burns, was striding across the fields in the direction of the woods with angry eyes and sternly set mouth.