He was at the hose now, having relieved Jim, to whom the business of standing still and holding a nozzle had been no light penance, despite the necessity of the proceeding. One of the men had taken Wally’s place, and the boys had dashed off on a tour of the homestead, to look for any possibility of a further outbreak. David Linton looked at what remained of his house, his mouth stern—going back in memory to the time of its building, and the old, perfect companionship that had been by his side. Now the rooms that he and his wife had planned were black, smoking ruins, and the roses she had planted were shrivelled masses on the wall. There was no part of the house that did not have its memories of her, so vivid that often it seemed to him that he saw her yet, flitting about its wide corridors and the rooms that even until now had borne the magic of her touch. All the years the home had helped him to fight his loneliness and his longing. Now——. He stared at it with eyes suddenly grown old.
Then across the grass came a little odd figure—Norah, still grimy with smoke, and very shaky, with Brownie’s arm near her to help, and Jean not far off. Norah, her coat open over her blue pyjamas, and her hair, in her own phrase, “all anyhow,” about her, and her grey eyes swimming as she looked from the house to her father’s face. David Linton put down the hose and held out his hand to her silently, and Norah clung to him.
“Oh, Daddy, poor old Daddy!” she whispered.
Jim came round the corner with long strides; even odder than Norah, for he had not waited to put any overcoat over his pyjamas, and he had been drenched and dried, and blackened and torn, until he resembled a scarecrow in an advanced stage of disrepair. He gripped his father’s free hand.
“It’s not so bad, Dad!” he said, cheerily. “Lots of the old place left. We’ll all build it up again, Dad!”
David Linton smiled at his children, suddenly.
“Right, mates!” he said. “We’ll build it up again!”
CHAPTER XII
BURNT OUT
And the creek of life goes wandering on,