Lucy lay back in the dreamless sleep of girlhood. It was a cold January morning, and the embers of last night's fire still slumbered in the grate. Suddenly there broke on the intense stillness the rhythmical sound of pebbles being thrown with careful, sure aim against the window, open some inches from the top. The sleeper stirred uneasily, but she slept on till a small stone, aimed higher than most of those which had preceded it, fell into the room. Then Lucy Kemp woke with a great start and sat up in bed listening. Yes, there could be no doubt about it, someone was standing in the paddock below trying to attract her attention! She got up, wrapped something round her, and then lifted the window-sash. In the dim light she saw a man standing just below, and Boringdon's hoarse, quick tones floated up to her. "Lucy--Miss Kemp! Would you ask your mother if she could come to the Priory as soon as possible? There's been an accident there--a fire--and I fear Mrs. Rebell has been badly burnt." His voice filled Lucy with varying feelings--joy that he had instinctively turned to the Grange for help, horror and concern at what he had come to tell. "Mother's away," she cried in a troubled tone. "She and father have gone over to Berechurch for three nights. Should I be of any use? I shouldn't be a moment getting ready." In less than ten minutes she joined him, and together they hastened through a seldom opened door giving access from the garden of the Grange into the Priory Park. Soon Oliver was hurrying her up the path, walking so quickly that she could scarcely keep up with him, towards the great silent mass of building the top windows of which, those which lay half hidden by the Tudor stone balcony, were now strangely lit up, forming a coronal of light to the house beneath. "What happened?" she asked breathlessly. "It's impossible to say what happened," Boringdon spoke in sharp preoccupied tones, "Mrs. Rebell seems to have been reading in bed and to have set fire to a curtain. She behaved, as she always does, with great good sense, and she and McGregor--heaven knows how--managed to put out the flames; not, however, before the fire had spread into the sitting-room next her bedroom. McKirdy, it seems, has always insisted that there should be buckets of water ready on every landing." Oliver would have scorned to defraud his enemy of his due. "When the whole thing was over, then they all--that stupid old Mrs. Turke and the maids--saw that she was badly burnt!"