She began to cry, so he let her go, unharmed. She did not leave immediately, but waited to pour him another cup of coffee. She wondered if he were asking too much, if other girls were so virtuous. She wondered if she should be kind to this unhappy man. But before she could answer these questions they saw the first flames and caught the smell of burning hay. 3 Looking back upon that night of wind and gusty rain when the Brailsford barn burned like a pile of dry shavings in a forest fire, Sarah sometimes wondered what blind impulse had sent her through the smoke and flames to save the twin Percheron colts. She thought that perhaps it was her feeling of protection for young things. She couldn't bear to think of the colts being burned. "Save yourself, Mother," Brailsford had cried above the roaring fire, struggling vainly to save the stallion; pleading, whipping and cajoling. At last he left the inert sire, rushed to the box stall of Napoleon and led the bull to safety. "Help Gus with the cows down at the other end," Stud shouted to his wife. "I'll get the horses." He went in among the fire-crazed mares and geldings, old work horses who were faithful and quiet in the field but who were now leaping, terrified, wild animals, straining at their halter ropes, pawing the floor, and shying like unbroken yearlings at the thunder of the flames. Early Ann led the three ponies into the tobacco shed, then ran like the wind to the telephone in the kitchen. "Hurry, it's the Brailsford barn," she cried. "Take the short cut over Barton's hill." Vern Barton, Ole Oleson and Dutchy Bloom were carrying water from the stock tanks. Sarah and Gus were leading out the cows. The big flames ran in sheets up the curving walls of the wooden silo, burst like a volcano through the peaked roof, cracked and thundered like a kettle drum in the half-empty cylinder. The resinous siding of the barn burned like a fire of pine knots, kindling the hand-hewn oak and hickory timbers cut from the forest with axe and adz fifty years before. Cows bawled. Pigeons and sparrows shot out like flaming rockets and fell into the fields. Chickens squawked as they tumbled from the building, ran around in circles like fighting cocks, or flew back crazily into the scorching flames. A mother cat carrying a singed kitten in her mouth stalked out of the barn, her eyes gleaming like green coals. Ganders added their hiss to the hiss of the fire, men shouted and women screamed.