"Grace!" Rosamund cried. Grace might have held her hand in a flame, and seemed to suffer less. Rosamund thought it was more than she could bear to witness. But Grace went on ruthlessly,
"They were watchin' and watchin' the house; an' after a while I saw Joe wavin' his arms at the other two, an' then they went off. It wasn't very long after that—maybe half an hour or so—that I smelled smoke. An', Miss Rose, when we got down an' out, I saw what nobody else seemed to take any notice of—I saw three corners of the house all blazin' up at the same time."
Rosamund had drawn her down to the side of the bed; now Grace paused, grasped Rosamund's hand, bent towards her, and whispered, hoarsely,
"Miss Rose, houses don't catch on fire that a way less'n somebody sets 'em!"
They looked at each other mutely for what seemed an eternity, sharing and accepting the horrid significance of it. At last Rosamund, shaking off the spell with a sharp indrawing of the breath, drew Grace to her, held her, everything else forgotten save that here was an agony greater than her own.
For a long hour they sat there talking, planning. Grace was torn between her sense of righteousness and her love for Joe, fanned anew as it was by his present need of her protection.
"I thought I had stopped carin' for him," she whispered. "But this—this ain't like the—other thing—you know what I mean. That didn't hurt anybody but himself, and it wasn't anybody else's business, not the Gov'ment's nor anybody's. But this is different. They—they hang for this, I reckon!"
Rosamund shuddered. "Grace, no one must know of it! No one must know!"
"I heard Pap Cary say they was to be an inquiry."
"It is my house. I can stop anything of that sort. I have no insurance on it, and there will be no one to press the inquiry if I don't. No one must know, Grace."