In the meantime, Calvin and his father had maintained a spirited fire upon the assassins that encircled the house. But the flames roar and feed unchecked. The smoke prevents good aim. Calvin is driven down-stairs by the heat and flames and acrid smoke. He suggests to his father to attempt a sortie. He remembers the corn-crib, a heavy log structure. He would attempt to reach it. Once there he might cover his father's retreat thither. Once there, they might yet drive their assailants off. He opens the door and starts on his perilous journey, running with the swiftness of the deer to get beyond the betraying circle of light from the now fiercely burning homestead. He is seen and instantly shot at. Unharmed by this volley, he runs as he has never run before. The balls whistle above him, around him, and plow the dirt at his feet. Already he has covered more than half the distance, now three-quarters of it. Yet he is untouched. He is within three or four feet of the little house he strives so manfully to reach. At the threshold of the refuge he throws up his hands, staggers, sinks to his knees, rises to his feet again, then plunges heavily down upon the frozen ground, dead. After his son's fatal attempt to escape, old man McCoy grasped a double-barreled shotgun, sprang from the door, discharged both barrels with telling effect into the gathered clan, and before they could realize what was happening their intended victim had disappeared in the darkness beyond the firelight, a darkness intensified by the glare of the flames, making aim impossible. Not a shot of the many vicious volleys that were fired after him touched him. Providence had once more decreed to spare the old man. But at what cost! Finding that the main object of their hatred and vengeance had again been baffled, the assassins withdrew, leaving behind them their work of destruction, the burning home of Randolph McCoy; the old mother groaning, unconscious and dangerously wounded on the ground; the daughter Allifair lying in a pool of blood; the son Calvin dead at the corn-crib; the remaining children crazed with terror and sorrow. The house was rapidly burning to the ground. Before the murderers withdrew, they had carefully closed the doors and window-shutters with the avowed purpose of cremating the entire family yet in the house. The insensible mother they had dragged back into one of the rooms, that she, too, might perish by fire.