"We shall see, we shall see," said Mr. Prevost, still pushing his horse forward. "The sun is going down fast; and a little haste will be better on all accounts."
In about five minutes more the summit of the hill was reached, at a spot where, in laying out two roads which crossed each other there, the surveyors had cleared away a considerable portion of the wood, leaving, as Lord H---- had said, a clear view over the greater part of the undulating forest country, lying in the angle formed by the upper Hudson and the Mohawk. Towns have now risen up; villages are scattered over the face of the land; rich fields of wheat and maize, gardens, orchards, and peaceful farmhouses, greet the eye wherever it is turned from the summit of that hill; but it was different then. With the few exceptions of a small pond or lake, a rushing stream, or a natural savanna of a few hundred acres, it was all forest; and the only sign of man's habitation which could be descried at any time was the roof and chimneys of Mr. Prevost's house, which, in general, could be discerned rising above the trees, upon an eminence a good deal lower than the summit which the travellers had reached. Now, however, the house could not be seen.
The sight which the country presented was a fine but a terrible one. On the one side, the sun, with his lower limb just dipped beneath the forest, was casting up floods of many-coloured light, orange and purple, gold, and even green, upon the light fantastic clouds scattered over the western sky; while above, some fleecy vapours, fleeting quickly along, were all rosy with the touch of his beams.
Onward to the east and north, filling up the whole valley between the hill on which they stood, and the eminence crowned by Mr. Prevost's house, and forming an almost semi-circular line, of some three or four miles in extent, was a dense, reddish-brown cloud of smoke, marking where the fire raged, and softening off at each extreme into a bluish grey. No general flame could be perceived through this heavy cloud; but, ever and anon, a sudden flash would break across it, not bright and vivid, but dull and half obscured, when the fierce element got hold of some of the drier and more combustible materials of the forest. Once or twice, too, suddenly, at one point of the line or another, a single tree, taller, perhaps, than the rest, or more inflammable, or garmented in a. thick matting of dry vine, would catch the flame, and burst forth from the root to the topmost branch like a tall column of fire; and here and there, too, from what cause I know not--perhaps, from an accumulation of dry grass and withered leaves, seized upon by the fire and wind together--a volley of bright sparks would mingle with the cloud of smoke, and be thrown up, for a moment, to the westward.
It was a grand, but an awful, spectacle; and, as Mr. Prevost gazed upon it, thoughts and feelings crowded into his bosom, which even Edith herself could not estimate.
[CHAPTER XV.]
"Look, look, Prevost!" cried Lord H----, after they had gazed during one or two minutes in silence; "the wind is drifting away the smoke; I can see the top of your house; it is safe as yet--and will be safe," he added, "for the wind sets somewhat away from it."
"Not enough," said Mr. Prevost, in a dull, gloomy tone. "The slightest change, and it is gone. The house I care not for; the barns, the crops, are nothing. They can be replaced, or I could do without them; but there are things within that house, my lord, I cannot do without."
"Do you not think we can reach it?" asked Lord H----. "If we were to push our horses into the stream there, we might follow its course up, as it seems broad and shallow, and the trees recede from the banks. Are there any deep spots in its course?"
"None, massa," replied the negro.