The sound continued. The men outside were evidently crouching at whatever work they were on, and so were safe and below the level of the loopholes.
"Brutes!" said he. "There is no chance of reaching them, but what on earth can they be about?"
Isbel, who had been peeping through one of the chinks near the door, came toward him.
"The day has broken," said she.
CHAPTER XXIII
DAYBREAK
Even as she spoke the words, and as though in answer to the question he had asked, a faint smell of burning filled the air of the room, and through one of the chinks, like a little gray snake, a wreath of smoke coiled upward, clinging to the woodwork.
"So that's what they were doing!" cried Floyd. "They have fired the house."
Through every chink and crevice a curl of smoke was licking upward, and now came the sharp, crackling sound of brushwood burning and the snap and hiss of sticks blazing alight.