'My friends of many years, I have to ask a favour of you. My brother's house is burning, and the brigade is away. Who'll help to save a Yorkshireman's home, however much he has blundered, for a Yorkshire family?'
'We will, Mr William,' cried a hundred voices, and five minutes later there was not a man to be seen in the yard; but Sarah and Naomi, who had climbed to the lookout, saw them hurrying up the road to the hill on which Balmoral stood.
Flames were coming out of the top windows.
'They may save the lower part,' said Sarah.
'The marble staircase won't burn, will it?' asked Naomi.
Sarah laughed hysterically. 'No; but it won't be much use alone,' she remarked.
'It's going to be a big fire,' observed Naomi in an awe-struck voice.
'I'm glad my father is not there,' was Sarah's apparently irrelevant reply.
Naomi was surprised for the second time that day at Sarah's solicitude for her father. She did not know that her dream had something to do with it. Besides, Mr Mark Clay, boastful and blustering, was a different man from Mark Clay a prisoner in his own mills, with his beautiful house burning.
'Oh miss, the royal suite is on fire! See!' cried Naomi, as she saw the flames come out of that wing.