The mountains now burst into midsummer. Bloom, color, and fragrance reigned; also heat and drought. The cups of the tulip tree, the tassels of the chestnut, lit the leafy canopy. The covert of azaleas blazed on the open slopes in all shades of red and yellow. In every crevice by the trickling streams rhododendrons lined the glades with garlands of purple and white.
The hidden house of the sisters was embowered in climbing roses and the passion flower. It was surrounded by gorgeous parterres, and the tendrils of the porch vines hung still, or only fluttered at sundown. There was no vapor at dawn or eve in gorge or on mountain-top. A dry blue haze like wood smoke dulled light and shade in the myriad hills. They looked like a vast perspectiveless painting by some prentice Titan, who had ground his one color from the pale petals of the wild hydrangea. Some clouds there were—ragged towers, tinted in the light browns and pinks of seashells. They tottered round the far horizon in fantastic trains, but came no nearer. The very azure of the sky was faded by the heat of the sun.
All moss and low wild flowers had long withered; the earth under the forest was hot and dry. The whole region basked, and from all the valleys a louder and more ceaseless tinkling rose from the herds of pigs and oxen who roamed for meagre provender.
One afternoon Durgan and his laborers heard a cry. It was the voice of Adam. They heard him crash through the brushwood above them.
"Fire!" yelled Adam, and crashed back toward the summit house.
Durgan outran his men, and was relieved to find the evil not beyond hope of redress. Smoke was issuing from one corner of the roof of the dwelling-house; no flame as yet, but the roof was of shingle, like tinder in the sun.
The ladies, with admirable skill and courage, had already organized their forces—Adam pumping, Bertha and Eve stationed on the path from the well, Miss Smith, the most agile, taking the bucket at the door and running up the stair. Thither Durgan followed, leaving his men to Bertha's command. The fire was smouldering between the ceiling of the kitchen and a pile of papers and books which lay on the floor far under the sloping roof of the low attic. Miss Smith had been wise enough to move nothing. The solid parcels of periodicals kept out the air, and she was dashing the water on the roof and floor.
With the added help smoke soon ceased. It remained to investigate the cause of the fire, which was not obvious, to make sure that the rest of the house was safe, and undo as far as possible the injury of the water, which, spreading itself on the attic floor, had poured into the bedrooms below.
While the negroes were carrying out the parcels of printed matter, wet and charred, Durgan moved about in all the recesses of the house, examining the walls, lifting wet furniture on to the sunny veranda roof, and otherwise helping to modify the unaccustomed disorder.
While thus engaged, he realized how strongly had grown upon him a fancy that these lonely women might be harboring some insane person, whose escape and violence they might justly dread. He must now smile at himself for thinking that any source of terror lurked here in visible shape. As he followed Miss Smith from one simple room to another, creeping under the very eaves of the roof and feeling the temperature of every wall and shelf, he certainly assured himself that neither the skeleton nor its closet was of material sort.