The wind had swept the haze and the smoke before it. The bosom of the earth lay bare of the light, dry, wanly-golden grass that had covered it; and from the paddocks and blackened forest thin spirals and breaths of bluish smoke rose and drifted. The peaceful space of trees and the summer-dried grasses about the Ayrmuir homestead were gone. Charred outlines of sheds and what of the house was still left, stood on the brow of the hill.
In the wan light, the pool mirrored the desolation and the haggard and weary men and women who stood in it. Chilled and cramped from being in the water so long, exhausted with the anxieties of the night, they ventured warily back to the still hot earth.
Mrs. Cameron's eyes turned first to her son. His face was grimed with smoke and leaf smuts. There were angry red flushes on it where scraps of burning foliage had struck him. Deirdre's and Jenny's clothes hung to them, scorched and dripping; there were burnt holes in Mrs. Cameron's own dress. Farrel and Davey were drenched to the skin.
The Schoolmaster had tied a handkerchief over his face, covering one eye.
In the first light of the dawn Deirdre exclaimed when she saw it.
"Father," she cried, "you're hurt."
"I'm all right," he said irritably.
She went over to him and lifted the handkerchief.
His face was curiously wrung with pain and blanched beneath the tan and smoke-grime. A clammy sweat beaded on his forehead.
"Hold your tongue, Deirdre," he muttered. "It's only a bit of a burn."