Page:Mehalah 1920.djvu/171

Rh Ray. She could still see a red cloud hanging over her burnt home. The tears rose in her heart at the sight, but would not well out at her eyes. She stood and looked long at the dying fire, drawing the window curtain behind her to screen from her the light of the room. Her mother lay quiet, evidently pleased at having got into such comfortable quarters, and exhausted with her alarm. By degrees she dozed off into unconsciousness of her loss and of her situation, and Mehalah remained at the window looking moodily over the fens and the water, at the ruby spark that marked her old home. She was standing in the same place when the boats arrived, bringing portions of their goods to Red Hall. She heard the voices of Rebow and other men below. She opened the door and listened. He was giving them something to eat and drink. Abraham Dowsing was there. She could distinguish his voice. "If I hadn't turned you out, you'd have been burnt," said Rebow. "A good job for mistress we saved the cowhouse," answered Abraham, with sulky unwillingness to admit that he was indebted to Elijah for anything. "Don't you think you owe me your life?" asked Rebow.

"The cowhouse didn't burn." "No. But it would have, had not we been there to keep the flames off," observed one of the men. "Good job for mistress I wasn't burnt. I don't know how she'd got along without me." "It did not matter particularly to yourself then, Abby?" "Don't know as it did. A man must die some time, and I've always heard as smothering is a nice quiet sort of death—better than being racked with cramps and tormented with rheumatics and shivered into the pithole with agues." After a pause Abraham's voice was heard to add, "Besides, I should have woke, myself, with the fire and smoke." "Not you. And if you had, what could you have done to save the old woman? She'd have been burnt to a cinder before you woke." "That's mistress' matter, not mine," answered Dowsing. "You could not have got the things out of the house."