“This end of the house was not destroyed at once, I think,” he said, “and I believe a good deal of the furniture was got out of it, things that you can still see at the cottage. The roof fell after a day or two and carried the walls with it, so that there are some relics left in the ruins still. This little room under the stairs must have been a den belonging to Miss Miranda’s brother Ted, for I found a pair of spurs and a rusty rifle, a melted silver cup, and some such things here. Beyond must have been the library and a conservatory behind, at least there are mountains of broken glass beside that wall.”
From here, then, had been rescued the toy-cupboard and such pieces of heavy mahogany furniture as were still in use in the cottage and which stood out in such strong contrast to the very plain chairs and tables of painted pine that filled the rest of the Reynolds’ abode. The ivy that had once climbed the high walls, that had crept around the leaded windows and festooned the pillared doorway, now spread its mats of green and its slim, rose colored tendrils over the desolate ruins and covered what it could. Broken pictures still showed half buried under bricks and plaster, while a mirror leaned crookedly against a wall, showing fantastic patterns of shivered glass.
“This must have been the kitchen,” David went on as they progressed farther. “Be careful how you climb about, these old walls are none too solid.”
He himself, however, went clambering up heedless of precaution, his only thought being, apparently, that harm might come to Betsey.
“That place beyond I’ve never explored,” he said; “wait here a minute until I get to the top of that ridge of bricks. The weight of both of us might make it begin to slide.”
“Don’t,” she objected, “it doesn’t look safe at all. Can’t you go to the other—”
He had left her protests unheeded and had clambered half way up the slope of broken débris, when she saw it begin to tremble under his feet, then suddenly give way and carry him down out of her sight. She ran to the edge to see, squeezed through the cleft made by the collapse of the brick-heap and slid down after, to find David, a trifle scratched and with his red hair full of brick-dust, standing gazing about him with untroubled interest.
“This must have been the end of the house where the fire started,” he commented. “See how much blacker the walls are and how even the bricks are burned. And look, that must be a part of one of the chimneys still left standing: you can see that the lightning struck it and split it to the very base. I wonder, with all the frost and rain since the fire, that it hasn’t fallen long ago. I don’t quite understand what this room is. It seems to have been away from the house and on a lower level.”
Elizabeth balanced on the edge of a stone and looked at the confusion about her, where rusty heaps of metal and coils of wire lay amid the other rubbish.
“It must have been Mr. Reynolds’ workshop,” she suggested, “and see, even those steel bars are melted together. The fire must surely have been hottest just here.”