Mr. Dinsmore did not attempt to reassure her further; indeed, the suggestion that Miss Charlotte, alone in the house, might have been asleep and overcome by smoke had occurred to him before Wythie voiced it. It was not pleasant to wonder why it was that the alarm had been given from outside, not from within the doomed building.
Mrs. Grey and her daughters were stationed beyond the reach of danger where the Rutherford boys soon found and joined them.
There was no question of saving the house; from the first it was doomed, and it would have been most painful to have stood helplessly by while the peaceful house that had absorbed so much of its blind mistress' calm repose was destroyed, had not all other thought been swallowed up in the absorbing anxiety which left Miss Charlotte's fate doubtful. For the feeling was growing among the knot of bystanders around the Greys that, if she were safe, they should have had some assurance of it, that, by this time, some one should have come forward who could tell them definitely where Miss Grey had taken refuge.
"It is unbearable," groaned Rob at last, through her set teeth.
"I will go around to the other side and see if I can't find out something, Rob," said Bruce with a glance at the girl's agonized face. "Look after them, Basil, Bart, if I can't get back very soon."
His tall form moved through the crowd, elbowing its way until it was lost to sight, before the Greys fully realized that he was going.
Moments passed, a quarter of an hour, and Mrs. Grey, held fast on either hand by her girls, watched with them the mounting flames, tense, silent with the misery that made each second seem an hour. Bruce did not return, the fire licked and burst its awful way around the eaves, around Cousin Peace's chamber window! Wythie hid her face, shuddering; she could not look.
Suddenly a great roar went up from the crowd, and many voices together shouted words which the onlookers could not catch. They cheered mightily, and then a deadly stillness settled upon the mass of human beings.
"What is it?" Rob asked of a man who pushed his way towards them.