Page:Wadsworth Camp--the gray mask.djvu/144

134 She turned and closed the door. Through the sudden darkness Garth heard Mrs. Alden run into the hall. He sprang after her, but Nora's voice, sharp and commanding, halted him.

"Let her go, Jim. I'll explain. Light the lamp now."

"You've earned the right to give the orders," he said.

He felt his way to the writing-table and lighted the lamp.

"You know," he said, "that there are many men near here—that they can trap us in this house?"

"I don't think," she answered, "that they will come to this house again."

He turned to her.

"Nora! What is it? Even after all I've seen I can't be sure. The furnaces? They are two miles away."

She shook her head.

"Not the furnaces, Jim. Come with me and I will show you."

She led him to an unlighted room across the hall and flung back the curtains.

The glare of a conflagration, far vaster than that which had threatened them in the conservatory, flashed in their eyes and lighted the neighborhood with a brilliancy fiercer than noonday.

For the first time Garth could see that the house stood on a high, wooded plateau. The trees had been cleared away between it and the water, and a slope, bordered with hedges, had been blasted