“She got out!” they screamed and shouted. “Where’s the Judge? Any one else?”
“The Judge and the baby!” I cried and sat down on the grass.
“No!” shouted the depot master. “The Judge is all right. I just met him walking over the bridge after the freight had gone through. It wasn’t twenty minutes ago. But you can’t save a thing—not a stick of furniture. The whole thing is gone from front to back on the ground floor already!”
“Here’s the Judge now! That’s him running with the straw hat in his hand,” a woman shrieked, and ran out toward him with her hair flying behind. I could see his tall figure, with its long legs, come hurdling across the street. I could see his white face with the jaw square and the lips pressed tight together.
“You!” he said, bending down. “Yes! Where’s Julianna? Where’s my baby?”
My head seemed to twist around like the clouds of pink smoke and the whirl of hot air that tossed the hanging boughs of the trees. The crackle and roar of the fire seemed to be going on in my skull. But I managed to throw my head back and my hands out to show they were empty.
“God!” he cried.
The world went all black for me then, but I heard voices.
“Stop, Judge! Don’t go! You’d never get out.”
“Let go of me!”