“Wait, Anne, wait!� called Mrs. Osborne. “Wait! They are bringing a ladder.�
A group of men came around the corner of the house, dragging a ladder. They raised it, but in their haste it was pushed too far to one side and caught on the window blind. Anne clutched at a swaying rung.
“Stop, Anne! Steady, old girl, steady!�
Dick pushed past Mr. Mallett, went like a cat up the ladder, steadied the upper end of it against the window sill, while Anne climbed down.
Explanations came by degrees, piecemeal, in ejaculations. When Mrs. Wilson and Ruth awakened, the flames had made a wall across the hall which they could not cross. They called and called Anne, but she did not answer.
“Oh! that’s what I heard in my sleep!� exclaimed Anne. “I thought you were the Germans.�
At last they had to shut the door as a temporary barrier to the fire. When it blazed, they climbed on a trellis below one of the windows. There they clung till help came.
Miss Fanny Morrison, who lived in the cottage next door, had awakened at last and she ran out, screaming and beating at doors, and aroused The Village.
As soon as Mrs. Wilson and Ruth and Anne were rescued, people set to work to save the contents of the house. But the upper floor was cut off by the burning of the staircase, and the fire had now made such headway that they succeeded in getting only a few articles from the lower rooms. The rapidly advancing flames drove them back and they stood, in helpless, sorrowful groups, like watchers at a deathbed.
“Oh, my home! my home!� sobbed poor Mrs. Wilson.