Shameless Wayne made as if to pursue; but the crackling of the flames behind warned him that there must be no delay if Marsh were to be saved. "To the mistals, lads. Bring buckets and fill them at the well-spring!" he cried. Griff and others needed no second bidding, but ran with him across the courtyard and pushed open the mistal-doors. The cows were lying quiet in their stalls; the place was fragrant with their breath, and every now and then there sounded a faint rattling through the gloom as one or other fidgetted sleepily on her chain. Shameless Wayne, dark as it was, knew where to lay hands on the feeding-buckets that were stored here in readiness for the coming summer; and soon he and Griff, and the three youngsters, were dashing water over the blazing threshold of the main door as fast as they could cross to the well and back again. Nell, meanwhile, once she had seen her brother safe through the fire and safe through the quick fight that followed, had found heart again. "Did I not bid you call me if one more arm were needed?" she cried, with a touch of her old spirit. "See, Rolf, the floor is smouldering now, and the panels are starting from the wall. We must get through the kitchen-door and fetch water from the well behind.—What, has the fire roused thee at last, Martha? Come with us—and thou, Mary." The maids, who had crept down in fearful expectation of what might meet them below-stairs, followed cheerfully when they found no worse enemy than fire to meet. The kitchen-door fell inward as they reached it, but there was little danger on this side, for floor and walls were of stone, and the peats could find no fuel. Wayne of Cranshaw stamped out the embers, and they all ran, a bucket in either hand to the well that stood just outside the door, and thence back to the hall; and while those in the courtyard rained water on the one side of the flames, Wayne of Cranshaw and the women-folk on the other side kept down the smouldering fire that threatened every moment to set the hall ablaze from roof to rafters. For a fierce half-hour they worked, Nell bearing her full share of the toil, until the last angry eye of fire was quenched. "Begow, if last week’s wind hed been fly-be-skying up an’ dahn, there’d hev been little left o’ Marsh; ’tis a mercy th’ neet war so still," said Martha, standing in her wonted easiful attitude and looking through the gaping doorway. "A mercy, say’st ’a?" snapped Mary, whose eyes were on the spears and swords that lined the walls. "A mercy, when there’ll be all yond steel to rub bright again to-morn? Sakes, I wodn’t hev thowt th’ smoke could hev so streaked an’ fouled ’em—an’ ’twas only yestreen I scoured ’em, too. Well, let them thank th’ Lord as thank can, but for me I’ll hod my whisht."