“The woman! I must get her. I may want you to help me. If I call you, come at once. Oh, I must hurry, Miss Elting.”
“Thee! That red eye ith getting bigger,” cried Tommy.
“It is fire, Miss Elting,” whispered Harriet. “The barn is on fire. The last bolt of lightning must have set fire to the hay. Don’t tell the girls now, but get them down to the barn floor as quickly as possible. There is going to be an awful fire.”
Harriet bounded toward the ladder.
“Harriet! Don’t go. I will go,” shouted the guardian.
“I know where she is,” cried Harriet, swinging herself to the ladder using care not to lose her footing on the broken rung.
“The broken rung is the fifth one down,” she called. Grasping the sides of the ladder she permitted herself to slide all the way to the bottom, wholly unconscious of the fact that the skin was being scraped from the palms of her hands.
Reaching the barn floor the girl dashed across it to the opposite side. A few precious seconds were lost in groping for the ladder there. She found it, ran up with the speed of a squirrel, then went stumbling and falling across the mow toward the red eye that was now growing into a great red glare.
“Where are you?” she cried, raising her voice to a high pitch.
There was no response from her side. From the other mow came the answer from Margery, who did not understand: “We’re here.”