And, even while he climbed, they were cutting off from beneath his feet his final hope of escape: and, even while he climbed, his Nemesis was toiling in his wake. She had heard him, and risen, ghastly and bloody, to her feet, and followed, dropping her own crimson trail, on his track.
It was the doom of both. For a cry had risen that the soldiers were coming, and that the work that was to do must be done after a more swift and comprehensive fashion than that designed, if the accursed spy was not to slip through their hands. He had vanished from the window: those few who had succeeded in forcing an entrance were still hurrying aimlessly hither and thither, in vain search of their prey. They were called out. Senseless, brutal in its destructive frenzy, the mob gave no thought but to the securing of its purpose by any foul reckless means; gave no thought to the safety of her, their own secret confederate and informer, who was still alive somewhere within the building. They formed a hasty cordon about the walls, and, carrying their massed fuel to a dozen kindling points, flung it in heaps through doors and windows and set fire to it.
And almost in a moment, incredible as it might seem, the place was alight and roaring. It had been a hot summer, the house was dry to its attics, and the old laths and timber caught like touchwood. In a few minutes it was blazing like a gorse-thicket: the pools of flame, like pools of quicksilver, touched and became one, which, involving the whole in one furious conflagration, went rushing up in a single cone of volcanic fire.
Soon the heat was so great that the crowd had to fall farther back to contemplate its own handiwork. Some, taking refuge in the shelter of the gateway, looked forth, half awed over the magnitude of their achievement. And, as they watched, suddenly there was a little figure on the roof, and it was throwing out its arms in a frantic appeal for the help that no power on earth could any longer afford it.
A sort of gloating sigh took the upturned faces like a wind; a pale fanatic creature screamed. The house by now was such a charred and crumbling ruin within the furnace that consumed it, it seemed impossible that any human being could find a foothold there. Was he going to take a last desperate chance by leaping from its walls? Even as they wondered, a second figure, a woman’s, was seen on the roof. The other seemed to turn to it—to turn away—to make a movement to spring. Too late. The next moment she had seized it in her arms and dived with it into the roaring abyss of flame. A silence, as of riven air after a thunderclap, fell upon the people.
CHAPTER XXXIII.
BEREAVEMENT
Stupefied, overwhelmed by the tragedy of the sight before him, Brion sat motionless a moment. Then aware, down the vista of the track, of a swarm of dark shapes issuing from the gate, with an oath he clapped spurs to his horse, and in one wild rush covered the distance.
Hangdog, threatening, sullen, loweringly defiant now the deed was done and themselves committed beyond recall, the mob stood to meet the onset, and to counter-strike if need be. He pulled up before them, his eyes blazing, his hands vicious on the reins.
‘Ye bloody devils!’ he roared. ‘What deed is this and wherefore?’ Then anguish caught at his heart in a sick spasm. ‘My Uncle!’ he cried—‘Where is he? What have ye done to him?’
They were coming out by twos and threes, while the flames still crackled and reverberated behind them, tossing and devouring the last blazing sticks of ruin; they were coming in a haste now to get away before the soldiers arrived. Fear added to guilt sped their footsteps, and they were in no temper to be delayed. Some one bade him, with an ugly snarl, to stand away, whoever he was, if he valued his life.