There lay Hannah Lee, no longer beautiful and fresh as the morning, but blackened, crisped, scorched and shrunken, with all her wealth of silken hair burned to ashes, with all her clear loveliness of complexion gone forever. And there lay Jason Fletcher, unburned,--so carefully had she covered him as she fled,--but senseless, and to all appearance a corpse. Thus Hannah Lee went through fire and water, even unto worse than death, for the sake of him she loved. And verily she had her reward. When the sun rose, there only remained a black and ugly pit to mark the place where Deacon Fletcher's house had stood. And of all its inmates, only Jason--carefully watched and tended at the house of Peter Hopkins--was left to tell the tale of that night's tragedy. And he, poor fellow, had no tale to tell, the delirium of fever having been upon him all the night. It was very doubtful if he would recover,--more than doubtful. Not one in a thousand could do so, with such an exposure at the critical period of his sickness. Even more tenderly, with even more anxiety, did all in the country round minister to poor Hannah Lee. The story of her love, of her bravery, of her heroic self-abnegation, spread throughout all those parts, and there was no end to what was done for her by neighbors and friends. So widely did her fame spread, that people from thirty, forty, and even fifty miles away came to see her, or sent messages, or money, or delicacies to comfort her. What _could_ be done for them was done, and they both lived. When Jason Fletcher arose from his sick bed, he arose another man than the Jason Fletcher who was thrown down in the arbor by Farmer Hopkins. He went sick, a dependent, simple, good-hearted, though impatient boy, worn out by the constraints of twenty years, but capable of future cultivation and improvement; he arose from his sickness a moody, cross-grained, dogged and impatient man, whose only memories were tinged red with wrong, and made bitter by thought of what he had endured. It was little matter to him that all his father's broad acres were now his own--the thought of the horrible death his parents had died only suggested a question in his mind, whether it were not a 'judgment' on them: they having lived to persecute him too long already. Through all the vista of his past life he saw only gloom and shadows, and no ray of brightness cheered the retrospective glance. No ray? Yes, there was one. He saw a fair young girl, loving and innocent, whose sweet face scarce ever left his thoughts. She reigned where father and mother held no sway; and she made, with the sunshine of her love, a clear heaven for him even in the purgatory of the past. So he lay, slowly gathering strength, dreaming about her. And presently they told him--gently as might be--how she had saved him. And they nearly killed him in the telling.