Trying the front door, and finding it fast, Peter uplifted his stout foot and kicked it crashing in, but he found it impossible to enter by the breach he [pg 164] had made. The front stairway was all in flames, and the fierce heat drove him hopelessly back. Then they ran around to the rear. By this time the entire upper portion of the building seemed to be one mass of fire and smote, and now they could hear shrill and terrible shrieks, evidently proceeding from the suddenly awakened inmates. They ran to the kitchen door and burst it in.
As they did so there rushed towards them from the foot of the kitchen stairs some horrible, blazing, and unnatural shape, that came stumbling but swiftly forward. With it came smoke and flame and a horrible sound of stifled moans.
At the approach of this strange and unsightly object they sprang back amazed, and it passed them headlong into the open air; passed them and dropped apart, as it were, into the stream before the door.
For many years thereafter the slumbers of Farmer Hopkins were disturbed by visions of what he saw when the two two parts of that terrible apparition were taken from the water.
There lay Hannah Lee, no longer beautiful and fresh as the morning, but blackened, crisped, scorched and shrunken, with all her wealth of silken hair burned to ashes, with all her clear loveliness of complexion gone forever. And there lay Jason Fletcher, unburned,—so carefully had she covered him as she fled,—but senseless, and to all appearance a corpse.
Thus Hannah Lee went through fire and water, even unto worse than death, for the sake of him she loved. And verily she had her reward.
When the sun rose, there only remained a black and ugly pit to mark the place where Deacon Fletcher's house had stood.
And of all its inmates, only Jason—carefully watched and tended at the house of Peter Hopkins—was left to tell the tale of that night's tragedy. And he, poor fellow, had no tale to tell, the delirium of fever having been upon him all the night. It was very doubtful if he would recover,—more than doubtful. Not one in a thousand could do so, with such an exposure at the critical period of his sickness.
Even more tenderly, with even more anxiety, did all in the country round minister to poor Hannah Lee. The story of her love, of her bravery, of her heroic self-abnegation, spread throughout all those parts, and there was no end to what was done for her by neighbors and friends. So widely did her fame spread, that people from thirty, forty, and even fifty miles away came to see her, or sent messages, or money, or delicacies to comfort her.
What could be done for them was done, and they both lived.