Away to the eastward the night express came thundering on, and one of its passengers, looking from his window, saw the lurid blaze, just as once before he had seen the bonfire crazy Nina kindled, and as he watched, a horrible fear grow strong within him, manifesting itself at last in the wild outcry, "'Tis Grassy Spring, 'tis Grassy Spring." Long before the train reached the depot, Arthur St. Claire, had jumped from the rear car, and was flying across the meadow toward his burning home, knowing ere he reached it that all was lost. Timbers were falling, glass was melting, windows were blazing, while at every step the sparks and cinders whirled in showers around his head. And where all this time was Richard? Victor was asking that question--Victor, just arrived, and followed by the whole household of Collingwood. They were the last to waken, and they came with headlong haste; but Victor's longer strides outran them all, and when Arthur appeared, he was asking frantically for his master. The negroes in their fright had forgotten him entirely, and the first words which greeted Arthur were, "Mr. Harrington is in the building!" "Where? where?" he shrieked, darting away, and dragging Victor with him. "In Nina's room. He would sleep there," Victor answered, and with another cry of horror, Arthur sprang to the rear of the building, discovering that the stairs leading to the Den were comparatively unharmed as yet. "Who will save him?" he screamed, and he turned toward Victor, who intuitively drew back from incurring the great peril. There was no one to volunteer, and Arthur said, "I will do it myself." Instantly a hundred voices were raised against it. It were worse than madness, they said. The fire must have caught in the vicinity of that room, and Richard was assuredly dead. "He may not be, and if he is not, I will save him or perish too," was Arthur's heroic reply, as he sprang up the long winding stairs, near which the flames were roaring like some long pent up volcano.