Fearing to trust herself to reply, Columbine darted from the library, leaving her father to the half-frenzied collection of his papers, and betook herself to the salt meadows, where, grimed with smoke, Tom and the old serving woman were sturdily laboring. The pungent smoke eddied about them, and already old Sarah’s gown showed marks of having been on fire in a dozen places. Columbine stood upon the descending path a moment and regarded them; then, with a step which bespoke determination, she went on and joined them.
“Go back!” shouted Tom, hoarsely, as she approached; “don’t you see how the sparks are flying about? You’ll be a-fire before you know it.”
And, indeed, the fire was becoming more active as it crept nearer to the edges of the meadows, where the grass was taller. The word of warning had hardly left Tom’s lips before she found her dress burning, and while, being of wool, it was easily extinguished, Tom found in it an excuse for taking her in his arms to smother the flame.
“Go back to the house,” he said, in a voice which was full of feeling, yet which it would have been impossible to disobey. “We shall save the place; but I cannot work while you are in danger.”
“And you?” she demanded, clasping her hands upon his arm.
“Nonsense! there is no danger for me,” he returned, smiling tenderly. “Don’t think of me.”
It was not until late in the night that the contest against the fire was concluded. Tom worked with an energy in which desperation had a large place, while old Sarah, with the pathetic fidelity of an animal, labored by his side, indefatigable and unmurmuring. Faint streaks of light had begun to show in the east when Tom flung down the spade, upon which he had been leaning, for a last close scrutiny.
“It is all right now,” he said; “there can’t possibly be any fire left on this side of the marshes. It was lucky for us that the tide rose into the lower part of the trench.”
Undemonstratively, as she had worked, old Sarah gathered herself together, grimy, stooping, quivering with weariness and hunger, and crept back to the house they had saved; while Tom, with tired step, climbed the path and took his way past the summer-house toward the other side of the mansion. As he passed the arbor something stirred within.
“Columbine!” he said, in surprise, recognizing by some instinct that it was she. “Why, Columbine, what are you here for? You will be chilled to death.”