Quite suddenly the little group made one mouth of a low moan of horror. Upon the north parapet of the roof a figure had come out--that of the missing girl. She stood beside a chimney-stack, whither the flames had not yet reached, and in the shaking glare she was as visible to all as though it were sunlight. She carried, it seemed, a bag of some sort in her hand, and she made no gesture of fear; but, in an instant, as a fountain of fire rose behind her, scattering sprays of sparks, she was dancing and kissing her hand to her own shadow on the chimney-stack. Then they saw that the two men were come out of the stable and were standing beneath, calling frantically up to the mad creature; and she bent and looked down upon them, while sobs and cries broke from the watching women and the men breathed hard. Her brother, it was evident, was beseeching her to throw herself, as her one chance, into a thick drift that lay beneath; and she could be seen to nod to him and to point exultantly to the bag on her arm. But in the act it slipped from her grasp and fell, and at once she fled after it, plunging from the parapet like a swimmer. Into the snow she went, as if it were foam, and flakes of the frozen crust of the drift span up and were flung against the wall. And the pent burden of the spectators found its shrill vent once more, and was lowered to sighs of pity as the two were seen coming across the snow with a limp shape looped between them. She had dived, and over the brink of Cocytus. She had gone to the shades that were ever her kinsfolk. When they looked at her they saw a smile on her mouth; but her hair hung slack, as if the flame of her soul was withdrawn from it. She was reasonable at last; and to make her so just this had been needed--to snap her slender neck like a lily-stalk. * * * * * * * * * * * When, by midnight, the great fire was died down to a cinderous glow, gasping and winking amongst walls of slag, the sad onlookers were moved pathetically to see the purple vault above them all embroidered with stars; the clerestory of the trees hung with them; the white pavement ghostly in their radiance. The candles of the vast cathedral, whose tapering walls are the cone of the earth’s own shadow, were lit, and the voiceless anthems of peace rose in the dreaming sighs of half the world. The flames, checked by the stone passage, and rising straight and clear in a windless night, had spared the stables; and thither at the last they all bent their footsteps, bearing the dead and the wounded with them. My lord, my lady; Tom and Dick and Moll--there they were fain to camp amongst the muck and litter left by the fallow-deer; and the frost pinched them sadly, and hunger even, and for the sick thirst; and never did reluctant day so dawdle in the East. CHAPTER LIV.