Neither Miss Judy nor Miss Sophia could ever recall very clearly what happened after that. The neighbors remembered only hearing, above the tumult of the tempest, blood-curdling screams and shrieks of fire, and murder, and theft, in tones which none of them recognized. The Oldfield people, men, women, and children, alarmed and panic-stricken, sprang from their beds, and rushed to the rescue through the storm and darkness in their nightclothes. The doctor alone was dressed, as he had not gone to bed, having just got home from the country. It was he--thus already afoot--who led all the rest, catching up his lantern, which was still lighted, and clubbing his umbrella for a weapon as he ran, as much alarmed as any one of all those who were rushing to the rescue. A single kick from his great boot shattered the wooden bar and burst open the front door. The outcry continuing, led him and those who followed close upon his heels to the bedchamber. When he held up the lantern, there stood the little sisters, locked together in a death-grip and quite out of their senses with fright. Their gentle little hands, which had never touched one another nor any living creature save with kindness, were fiercely clutched in each other's gray hair, hooked like bird-claws through the shreds of their tattered nightcaps; their mild eyes, which had seen only love in all their tranquil lives, were still closed against the first horrors which they had ever encountered; their soft voices, which had never before been harsher than the cooing of doves, now shrilled by wordless terror, still pierced the roar of the tempest with ceaseless shrieking. Thus it was that all the horrified neighbors found them. The doctor never knew whether he was laughing or crying when he picked them both up--one on each arm--and put them to bed as though they had been his own babies. Dear little Miss Judy! Poor little Miss Sophia! That night comes back to most of us with a smile that is tenderly close to tears. XVII LOVE'S AWAKENING But there never was any open smiling over the events of that memorable night. Miss Judy herself regarded what had happened far too gravely to allow of its seeming trivial or amusing to any one else. Indeed, she so plainly shrank from all mention of it that it was rarely spoken of at all. Everybody saw how pale she turned whenever it was mentioned, and how she pressed her little hand to her heart. So that, as no one ever knowingly gave the little lady pain, the memory soon dropped into kind oblivion.