Again Mrs. Timmins caught a glimpse of the black coach of death in the dust clouds ahead of her. The race became every instant more exciting. It was a strange sight, and instinctively the farmers, in their returning vegetable wagons, drew aside to let them pass. Once more the hearse disappeared in the dust clouds. This was the last Mrs. Timmins saw of it until she drew up in front of the crematorium. There it stood, with its black doors thrown wide open. She had come too late! Her father's body had already been thrust into the fiery furnace.
The antagonism of Winkletip's family to his views concerning the cremation of the dead was an open secret with every attaché of the society, and the men in charge were determined that the society should come out the winner. They were on the lookout for the body. Everything, to the minutest detail, was in readiness. The furnace had been pushed to its greatest destroying power, and hence was it that haste overcame dignity when the foam-flecked and panting horses of the undertaker drew up in front of the entrance of the crematory.
The ice-chest was snatched from the hearse, borne hurriedly into the furnace-room, set upon the iron platform, wheeled into the very center of the white flames, whose waving, curling, twisting tongues seemed reaching out to their fullest length, impatient for their prey, and the iron doors slammed shut with a loud, resounding clangor.
At that instant a woman, hatless and breathless, with disheveled hair, burst into the furnace-room.
"Hold! Hold!" she shrieked, and then her hands flew to her face, and staggering backward and striking heavily against the wall, she sank, limp and lifeless, in a heap on the stone floor of the furnace-room.
But the two men in charge had neither eyes nor ears for Mrs. Timmins. As the doors closed they sprang to their posts of observation, in front of the two peep-holes, and stood watching the effect of the flames upon the huge ice-chest.
Its wooden covering parted here and there with a loud crack, laying bare the metal case, from the seams of which burst fitful puffs of steam. Now came a sight so strange and curious that the two men held their breath as they gazed upon it! By the vaporizing of the water from the melted ice the flames were pushed back from the chest, and it lay there for an instant, as if protected by some miraculous aura.
Then happened something which caused the men to reel and stagger as if their limbs were paralyzed by drink, and which painted their faces with as deep a pallor as death's own hand could have laid upon them.
From the furnace depths came forth a dull, muffled cry of "Help! Help!"
Making a desperate effort, the men tore open first the outer and then the inner doors of the fire chamber. As the air rushed in, the lid of the metal chest burst silently open. Again the cry of "Help!" rang out, and two hands quivered for an instant above the edge of the chest, then with a loud and defiant roar the flames closed in upon it, and began to lick it up ravenously. The doors were banged shut, and John Winkletip had his way.