Meanwhile there had been interesting doings at the Towers. When the Squire, with Tonkin’s party, pursued the Frenchmen down the hill, Sam Pollex slipped away and ran with all his might to the Dower House, where the alarm bell was clanging, while smoke poured from the lower windows. He dashed into the house, found the cook in hysterics in the kitchen, and receiving no answer from her when he demanded where Maidy Susan was, hunted through all the floors until at last he discovered her in an attic, tugging frantically at the bell-rope. "Oh, maidy," he said, "come wi’ me, or you’ll be smothered in the burnin’ fiery furnace. Yer maister be took; come, maidy, please." He removed the rope from the girl’s hands, put his arm about her, and led her quickly down the stairs. "Where be Cook?" she cried, gasping, half suffocated by the rolling smoke. "In kitchen, hollerin’ and screamin’," replied Sam. "Oh! poor thing, we can’t leave her. Come, Sam, quick." They ran into the kitchen, and while Susan tried to calm the frenzied woman, Sam took down her bonnet from its peg, and set it, hind part before, on her head. Then they lifted her, and led her out into the open air. "Wherever shall we go?" said Susan. "I declare, I’ve left all my things behind; I must go back for them." "Never in life!" said Sam. "I can’t hold this great big female up wi’out ’ee. You must come home-along wi’ me. Mistress will take ’ee in: she do hev a kind heart." Thus it happened that when Dick reached home in company with the Vicar, Sam met him at the door with a face like the rising sun, and whispered: "She’ve come, Maister Dick!" "Who has come?" asked Dick. "Maidy Susan, to be sure. Mistress hev right-down took to her, I do believe. Cook be here, too, and Feyther do look tarrible low in the sperits, ’cos she told un he’d no more idee than a chiel o’ three how to stir up a figgy pudden." When Dick joined his parents, he found them discussing the future of the two women with Mr. Carlyon. "We can’t afford to keep them, you know, Vicar," said Mrs. Trevanion. "The girl seems a pleasant, handy young thing, and I should like her about the house much better than young Sam; but——" "Exactly," said the Vicar. "Well now, ’tis Christmas Eve. Shall we forget all our troubles, and get our souls in tune for to-morrow? One thing makes for peace, and that is the disappearance of John Trevanion, to whom I trace all the unneighbourly feeling between the village and you." Thus the matter was left. After the Vicar had drunk a dish of tea, he walked back in Dick’s company to the Parsonage, his horse having not yet been returned to him.