The next minute, with scores of others, choking and blinded with the
smoke, we were flying from the fire. The wind had turned.
"It is only a gust," I cried, "it will swing round again. We must turn the
next corner and reach the house from the far side." I glanced back to see
why my companions lagged and lo! they had vanished.
IX
I reached the house just in time to save its front grounds from the
invasion of the rabble. The wind had not turned back again. The brother-in
law's widow was offering prayers of thanksgiving. The cisterns were empty
and the garden stood glistening in the afternoon sun like a May queen
drenched in tears; but the lovely spot was saved.
I left its custodian at an upper window, looking out upon the fire, and
started once more to find my friends. Half-way round to the Sisters'
cottage I met them. With many others I stepped aside to make a clear way
for the procession they headed. The sweet, clean wife bore in her arms an
infant; the tattered, sooty, bloody-headed husband bore two; and after
them, by pairs and hand in hand, with one gray sister in the rear, came a
score or more of pink-frocked, motherless little girls. An amused rabble
of children and lads hovered about the diminutive column, with leers and
jests and happy antics, and the wife smiled foolishly and burned red with
her embarrassment; but in the taxidermist's face shone an exaltation of
soul greater than any I had ever seen.
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