They sat erect, trembling and startled, to see their mother bending over them, a hand on the shoulder of each, as she cried: "Wythie, Rob, wake up, wake up!" "What has happened?" cried the frightened girls on their feet in an instant. "Charlotte's house is burning; they have called us. We must go," gasped Mrs. Grey. "Put on warm clothing; make haste! Prue, stay here with Lydia and that child," she added as Prue, wide eyed and pale, joined the group. Somehow Wythie and Rob found themselves dressing; everything went wrong, yet they managed, after a fashion, to get themselves sufficiently protected from the chill of the night air, and found themselves with their mother, escorted by some of their men neighbours down the street. The elms stood out against a background of red, from which tongues of flame occasionally shot up, dulling the red glow on the sky, and revealing the smallest twigs. It was Cousin Peace's house which was burning! The girls repeated the words as they ran, trying to make them real, convey a meaning. Poor blind Cousin Peace! With this thought Wythie stopped short. "Where is she? Where is Miss Grey?" she demanded. It was Lawyer Dinsmore who held her arm; she felt his hand tremble on it as he answered: "We do not know; we could not find her--" Wythie groaned, and he hastily added: "It must be that she is safe, Wythie. There was time to get out, but no one has seen her. Her senses are so abnormally acute that she must have known of the fire before the alarm was given, and escaped." "Unless she slept, and the smoke--" Wythie could not go on. "Hurry!" she murmured. Mr. Dinsmore did not attempt to reassure her further; indeed, the suggestion that Miss Charlotte, alone in the house, might have been asleep and overcome by smoke had occurred to him before Wythie voiced it. It was not pleasant to wonder why it was that the alarm had been given from outside, not from within the doomed building. Mrs. Grey and her daughters were stationed beyond the reach of danger where the Rutherford boys soon found and joined them. There was no question of saving the house; from the first it was doomed, and it would have been most painful to have stood helplessly by while the peaceful house that had absorbed so much of its blind mistress' calm repose was destroyed, had not all other thought been swallowed up in the absorbing anxiety which left Miss Charlotte's fate doubtful. For the feeling was growing among the knot of bystanders around the Greys that, if she were safe, they should have had some assurance of it, that, by this time, some one should have come forward who could tell them definitely where Miss Grey had taken refuge. "It is unbearable," groaned Rob at last, through her set teeth. "I will go around to the other side and see if I can't find out something, Rob," said Bruce with a glance at the girl's agonized face. "Look after them, Basil, Bart, if I can't get back very soon."