"Very well said, Bob," said Crawford. "Let us see the other side of the house." And the two soldiers advanced as near as was comfortable to the blazing building, for that purpose. It had not yet fallen, though every board had dropped away, and every timber was a thin line of fire, fast charring to coals. The house had evidently been that of a person of some condition, though of perhaps no remarkable wealth. It had been of two stories, with a piazza in front and a neat little yard showing a few flower-shrubs, a bordering of fruit-trees at the sides of the enclosure, and two medium-sized Lombardy poplar trees at the gate. No negro-quarter was visible, or any evidence that the "peculiar institution" had formed any part of the domestic policy of the occupants. Just as the companions approached the gate and stood observing these particulars, the demon of fire obtained his last triumph over the material of the building. The snapping and crackling of the flames increased for a moment, and the forked tongues seemed licking closer and closer around the doomed pile; then there was a sudden change--the arched rafters sunk away--the slight shock disturbed what had yet remained of the frame-work--and the instant after, with a loud rumbling crash, the whole building went down into a heap of ruins, one high burst of flame shooting up skyward as a signal that the destruction had been accomplished, and showers of sparks following it, like a burst of fireworks at some grand celebration. With the fall, the broad light of the fire over the surrounding fields and on the neighboring woods died away, and there only remained a great heap of burning timbers, smouldering coals and embers, giving scarcely more light than an ordinary watch-fire. But the peculiar interest of that scene did not die out with the fall of the building: on the contrary, it was at that moment that it began to assume proportions more easily recognized. For mingled with the crash of the fall there seemed to be the sharp, shrill, terrible scream of a human voice in agony; and the very instant after that scream was repeated, so distinctly that it drove the blood from the cheeks of both the soldiers at the gate. "My God! did you hear that?" said Crawford. "Didn't I!" answered Webster. "I wish I _hadn't_! Jack, do you know, there must have been somebody in the house after all, burning to death; and that scream, when the building fell, was the wind-up of a life!" "It must have been so, and we have been standing here, doing nothing, when aid might have been given!" said Crawford, in self-reproach, and forgetting how little a man with one arm can do in the way of carrying out people from a burning building. "Yet no--stop! No, Bob, that scream was not the last of the person's life, for didn't you notice, we heard it _twice_, and the last time after the house had fallen in? After that house fell, no one inside of it ever screamed, and so--"