The Hundredth Chance

by Ethel M. Dell

It was not dark. The tearing wind had chased all clouds from the sky, and the daylight still lingered. Ahead of her the North Star hung like a beacon, marvellously bright. There was a smell of smoke in the air that seemed to accentuate the bitter coldness.

The church clock struck six as she passed it, and she sought to quicken her steps, she did not want Jake to come in search of her. For some reason she did not greatly want to tell him how she had been spending the afternoon.

Round the bend of the road the wind caught her mercilessly. She had to battle against it with all her might to make any progress at all. It was while she was struggling round this bend that there suddenly came to her the sound of galloping hoofs and a man's voice wildly shouting. She drew to one side, and stood against the hedge; and in a moment a horseman dashed into view and thundered past her. He was lying forward on the animal's neck, urging him like a jockey.

He was gone like a whirlwind into the dusk, and Maud was left with a throbbing heart that seemed to have been touched by a hand that was icy-cold. She was nearly sure that the animal had come from the Stables and that the man was Sam Vickers. He was not a furious rider as a rule. What had induced him to ride like that to-night? Something was wrong--something was wrong! The certainty of it stabbed her like a knife. What could it be? What? What? Had Jake met with an accident? Was Sam tearing thus madly down to Fairharbour to find the doctor?

The strength of a great fear entered into her. She began to run up the hill in the teeth of the wind. She had only half a mile to go. She would soon know the worst.

But she had not gone twenty yards before her progress was checked. She became aware of a drifting mist all about her, a mist that made her gasp and choke. She ran on in the face of it, but it was with failing progress, for the further she went the more it enveloped her like the smoke of a vast bonfire.

The coldness at her heart became a tangible and ever-growing fear. She tried to tell herself that the suffocating vapour blowing down on her came from a group of ricks that stood not far from the entrance to the Stables. Some mischievous person had fired them, and Sam had discovered it and gone to raise the alarm. But deep within her there clamoured an insistent something that refused to be reassured. Struggling on through the blinding, ever-thickening smoke, the conviction forced itself upon her that no hayricks were responsible for that headlong gallop of Sam's. He had gone as a man going for his life. His progress had been winged by tragedy.

Gasping, stumbling, with terror in her soul, she fought her way on, till a further bend in the road revealed to her the driving smoke all lurid with the glare of flames behind. By that curve she escaped from the direct drift of it and found herself able to breathe more freely. The shoulder of the hill protected her at this point in some degree from the wind also. She covered the ground more quickly and with less effort.

It was here that there first came to her that awful sound as of a rending, devouring monster--the fierce crackling and roaring of fire. The horror of it set all her pulses leaping, but its effect upon her senses was curiously stimulating. Where another might have been paralysed by fear, she was driven forward as though goaded irresistibly. It came to her--whence she knew not--that something immense lay before her. A task of such magnitude as she had never before contemplated had been laid upon her; and strength--such strength as had never before been hers--had been given to her for its accomplishment.

She did not know exactly when her fear became certainty, but when that happened all personal fear passed utterly away from her. She forgot herself completely. All her being leapt to the fulfilment of the unknown task.