"Are the skies falling?" cried Mrs. Lewis.
It seemed indeed as though they were. That thunder-clap had loosened the pent rain, and it came pouring down in floods, veiling them in grayness, the multitudinous plash and patter mingling with a sound like myriad chariot wheels driving overhead.
They closed the windows, which immediately became sheeted with water, the servants went back to their places, Dora took courage, and ventured to uncover one blue eye, with which she looked askance at the window. Mrs. Lewis began to take an esthetic view of the matter, and Miss Hamilton a practical, which she carried out by setting herself to kindle a fire against the coming of the absent ones. They were sure to be drenched.
She had wood brought, removed the pine boughs from the fireplace, and, kneeling on the hearth, began arranging the pile after the most scientific country fashion, miniature back-log, back-stick, and fore-stick, then the finished pyramid, sloping smoothly with the chimney. It was pretty enough to burn, built of birch, amber and golden-hearted, with bark of silver and cinnamon. Nothing else in woods so beautiful as those birch colors.
Then it must be lighted with ceremony, being their first fire, their beltane a little belated. Fresh, drowned roses were snatched in out of the drip to crown the pyre, and the ladies had the temerity to despatch the minister, as officiating priest, with a wax taper, to bring sacred fire from the kitchen grate. Lucifer matches were not to be thought of.
The lambent flame shone softly out through the chinks, then reddened and grew broader, tongues of fire lapped the sticks, and disappeared and reappeared, becoming bolder each time, blistering brownly the silvery bark, catching at the edges, and rolling it up and off the sticks. Columns of milk-white smoke rose, propped by half-sheathed flames, and curled over, mimicking every order of convolution. Mr. Southard recited:
"'A gleam—a gleam from Ida's height,
By the fire-god sent it came,
From watch to watch it leaped, that light,
As a rider rode the flame.'"
The smoke shut thickly down, a moment; then a broad blaze burst out, wrapped the logs, and began to devour them, roaring like a lion.
The others gathered about the cheerful fire which was reflected in their faces; but Margaret glanced out at the storm, then went up to the long chamber entry from which a window looked down the townward road, and began walking to and fro there, wringing her hands, and listening to the wind and the rain lash the windows. A sudden darkness and terror had settled upon her. It was more than that atmospheric influence to which many are susceptible, more than a mere vague impression of evil; it was a thought as clearly defined as if some one had that moment given it utterance in her hearing, and it held her like a conviction. Some one whom she knew was at that instant dying, or dead!