It was not until late in the night that the contest against the fire was concluded. Tom worked with an energy in which desperation had a large place, while old Sarah, with the pathetic fidelity of an animal, labored by his side, indefatigable and unmurmuring. Faint streaks of light had begun to show in the east when Tom flung down the spade, upon which he had been leaning, for a last close scrutiny. "It is all right now," he said; "there can't possibly be any fire left on this side of the marshes. It was lucky for us that the tide rose into the lower part of the trench." Undemonstratively, as she had worked, old Sarah gathered herself together, grimy, stooping, quivering with weariness and hunger, and crept back to the house they had saved; while Tom, with tired step, climbed the path and took his way past the summer-house toward the other side of the mansion. As he passed the arbor something stirred within. "Columbine!" he said, in surprise, recognizing by some instinct that it was she. "Why, Columbine, what are you here for? You will be chilled to death." "You sent me away," returned the girl, with a trace of dogged protest in her voice. "You wouldn't let me help." "I should hope not," laughed Tom, nervously, taking off his hat and passing his hand through his hair, from which odors of smoke flowed as he stirred it. "You were hardly made to fight fire." "No," she answered, with sudden and significant vehemence, "I was not made to fight fire." He moved uneasily where he stood in the darkness; then he took a stride forward and sat down beside her. They were silent a moment, his eyes fixed upon the first far sign of dawn, while hers searched the gloom for his features. "Columbine," he began, at length, in a voice of strange softness, "it would have been better for us both if I had never come here." "No, no," was her eager reply; "I cannot have you say that. You have put savor into my life that was so vapid before." "But a bitter savor," he said. "Bitter, yes," Columbine returned in a voice which, though low and restrained, betrayed the fierceness of her excitement. "Bitter as death; but sweet too, sweet as--" She left the sentence unfinished. Below on the shore the full tide was lapping the stones with monotonous melody. Save for their iterance, the stillness was almost as deep as the marvellous silence of a winter night which no sound of living thing breaks. "Whatever comes," Columbine murmured a moment later, her voice changed and softened so that he had to bend to catch her words, "I am glad of all that has happened; glad of you; glad, always glad."