As she stood terror-stricken, a tongue of fire crept through the floor and caught the loose straw with which it was strewn. At this fresh horror she uttered a piercing shriek, for escape seemed impossible. As her voice rose on the night, it was answered by another from the darkness. ‘Mother! mother!’ Her heart stood still. Was she dreaming? Whose voice could it be that uttered that holy name? She leant out over the mill-wheel, and saw beyond her in the darkness the glimmer of a lanthorn. ‘Help! help!’ she cried; and as she cried the whole place seemed rocking beneath, and thick clouds of smoke and tongues of fire came up through the heating floor. Then again she heard the voice, crying and imploring. ‘Mother! mother!’ ‘Who’s that?’ she cried. ‘Desmond--your son Desmond!’ Desmond! Her son! Even in her dire and awful peril she felt a thrill of delicious joy. ‘Save me, Desmond, save me!’ she cried. ‘The water-wheel!’ answered Desmond. Climb out from the window, stand on the wheel, and lape for your life into the pool below!’ Moya hesitated, and again, as the flame and smoke thickened behind her, uttered a despairing scream. ‘’Tis your only chance for life,’ called the voice. ‘Jump, mother darling! Sure I’ll be near to help ye! Jump, for the love of God!’ It was that or being burned alive. The whole mill was now one sheet of flame, and the fire scorched her as she stood, while the wooden floor crackled and split beneath her feet. Crossing herself, and consigning her soul to God, she scrambled out on the wheel and clung there on hands and knees, exposed to the full force of wind and rain. ‘Jump, mother!’ cried Desmond once more. She fluttered forward with a cry, and slipped rather than fell with a heavy splash into the boiling waters of the pool. As she did so her senses left her; she seemed to be sucked down, down into some awful abyss; then she was conscious of nothing more. When her eyes opened, she was lying on the bank of the stream, with the light from a lanthorn flashing into her face. ‘Mother! mother!’ cried the voice she had heard before. ‘It’s Desmond--your son Desmond!’ His arms were round her neck, her head was on his bosom. Peebles, holding the lanthorn, bent over them, tears streaming down his wrinkled face. ‘Desmond--my boy!’ she murmured. ‘Mother, my mother!’ he answered, sobbing over her. He had watched her drop into the mill-pool, and then had plunged in to her rescue, catching her as she was swept down towards the fall below the mill, and swimming with her to the bank whereon she now lay. CHAPTER XII.--MR. PEEBLES PREPARES FOR WAR. For a long, sacred space the mother and son thus strangely reunited knelt together, their arms about each other, their hearts full of a whirl of many mingled emotions which made speech impossible. When at last Moya broke the long silence, it was with a voice curiously calm, despite the deep underlying tremor which told by what an heroic effort she was able to speak at all.