Through a crack in their darkening stalls True espied the red-hot crow-bar, and the guttering tallow dip Silas had lighted and brought from the kitchen.
Piebald Ceph had always been a mild-tempered horse, but scarce had the firing-iron touched his hock than he sent it—and the candle—flying into the hayloft, with an unexpected and well-directed kick.
Before a horse could have whinneyed the place was in flames, the dry hay dropping in blazing bunches from overhead.
A diabolic scene followed!
Seconds passed like hours.
True jerked his halter loose in terror, snapping the rope sharply; his heart almost ceased to beat, he was so frightened. Gipsey, locked in her stall, uttered a scream, as horses sometimes do when overcome with fear: old Ceph, crowding into the extreme corner of his stable, groaned pitifully.
It was like a roaring furnace, the heat intense, the smoke suffocating.
The shouting of the men was drowned in the confused mingling of horrible sounds as the flames leaped and licked the dry hay and caught the well-seasoned timbers.
The horrid odor of burnt hair, a sudden silence in Ceph’s stall, told a heart-rending tale. The echoes of his mother’s cry had hardly died away when True felt a cool, wet cloth thrown over his eyes and held tightly; something struck him violently, and a voice spoke to him in such a tone of command that he forgot everything and, trembling like a leaf, allowed himself to be led into the outer air.
Then, vaguely at first, he recognized Mistress Whitman’s tones, soothing now, and tender, albeit very shaky!