Page:Frank Packard - Greater Love Hath No Man.djvu/179

 Varge interrupted, with a reassuring smile. It will be only a moment. I will see if there is anything I can do."

He turned as he spoke, dashed around the corner of the house and raced on along the driveway to the rear. The sharp, biting, vicious crackle of flame came now with a low, ominous roar. It was the kitchen, low-roofed, one-story high, built out as a sort of adjunct to the house, as he had supposed, and the flames and smoke were bursting now from its windows. The fire must have been gaining grim headway for a long time within before it had flung out its challenge, and, with Martha away and that portion of the house hidden from the penitentiary walls by the barn and shade maples on the driveway, it was not strange that it had not attracted notice.

A rush of smoke drove him back from the kitchen door as he opened it—and mingled with the acrid odour of burning wood came the sharper, more pungent odour of burning oil. The breeze, sweeping through the door, whirled back the smoke and fanned a dancing layer of shimmering white upon the floor, that lapped greedily over and ran up the walls, into whiter, angrier fury. He shut the door again instantly to keep out the air current.

His resources were a bucket and the cistern—the latter twenty yards away at the side of the barn. He smiled grimly—as well a thimble to dip in a hand basin! The kitchen, at least, was already long past the hope that lay in buckets, though if there were only men enough it might—

A horse's hoofs thundered up the driveway and a rider flashed into sight around the corner. It was Kingman, the mounted patrol.