The little baronet silenced and marshalled them all. He led them--preceded by one loving soul--shivering and shrieking down the passage--into the open air; and there against a snow-drift he left them, and fled back to his duty. Not an individual, thank God!--save those already accounted for--was injured. He came upon the master, faint and stumbling, in the hall. On one side the faithful groom supported him; on the other a poor girl received his weight. She, this pathetic maid, looked dumbly at the rescuer, wistful as a shorn lamb. “What can you do to this?” her eyes said. They might have yearned as those of her, the mother of the cripple that was brought to Jesus. “Help him outside,” he said, with compassion in his voice. He did not know that here his quarrel with his friend was pitifully resolved. Through the now ruddy fog he went down into the room of death. Brander, lying in his agony at the step-foot, cried to him to save him from a horrible fate. “The worthy first,” he said sternly, and could have found it in his heart to pity the poor wretch for the despairing moan he vented. But it was Whimple he hunted for and shrieked to; and whose prostrate form he at length stumbled upon. “What are you doing here?” he yelled. “Do you want to be grilled like a herring?” “Let me burn and cleanse my hands,” the poor fool cried up. “No water will wash them.” “You madman! You struck for your life and revenged your master!” “My God! Is he dead?” The man got to his feet in the terror of the thought. “Is he dead?” he whispered awfully, his ghastly face pressed forward. “No--but he’s hurt--he’s hurt. And there’s another to pull from the fire--Luvaine, that my mind misgives me lies at the source of this trouble. You’ll come, man, and help me with him, if he’s alive?” “Yes, yes--life! Oh! show me where I can do something to save it!” He stumbled blindly after the other, and he gave out a heavy groan as he passed by the inanimate bundle on the floor. Bloody Jack Fern showed his right title to the adjective; but it was obvious he was gone beyond considerations of rescue. The draught drawn into the burning house had for the moment a little thinned the smoke in the passage. They took advantage of the respite, and plunged for the rearward chamber, where they assumed the victim must lie. The misty lightnings flashed from the blazing room were their only lamps of guidance; for the crash had extinguished or overturned every taper in the lower part of the building, and a reeling darkness added to the horror of the situation. Fortunately Dennis was familiar with every stone of the old grange; and he led Sir David, who clung to his coat-skirt, with an unerring instinct. But at the very entrance of the vault they stumbled over some _débris_, and recovering themselves and moving forward again, down they clumped upon a flap of shattered wood-work, and near rolled into a black yawning mouth that breathed a sick vapour at them.