Thus it was arranged, and Reuben, with a strong hand on the tight reins, started the horses on their homeward rush toward the flaming horizon. CHAPTER XXXIII.--PACING TOWARD THE REDDENED SKY. For some time there was no conversation in the sleigh. The horses sped evenly forward, with their heads well in the air, as if they too were excited by the unnatural glare in the sky ahead. Before long there was added to the hurried regular beating of their hoofs upon the hard-packed track another sound--the snoring of the ’squire on the seat behind. There was a sense of melting in the air. Save where the intense glow of the conflagration lit up the sky with a fan-like spread of ruddy luminance--fierce orange at the central base, and then through an expanse of vermilion, rose, and cherry to deepening crimsons and dull reddish purples--the heavens hung black with snow-laden clouds. A pleasant, moist night-breeze came softly across the valley, bearing ever and again a solitary flake of snow. The effect of this mild wind was so grateful to Jessica’s face, now once more burning with an inner heat, that she gave no thought to a curious difficulty in breathing which was growing upon her. “The scoundrels shall pay dear for this,” Reuben said to her, between set teeth, when there came a place in the road where the horses must be allowed to walk up hill. “I’m sure I hope so,” she said, quite in his spirit. The husky note in her voice caught his attention. “Are you sure you are bundled up warm enough?” he asked with solicitude, pulling the robe higher about her. “Oh, yes. I’m not very well. I caught a heavy cold yesterday,” she answered. “But it will be nothing, if only we can get there in time.” It struck her as strange when Reuben presently replied, putting the whip once more to the horses: “God only knows what can be done when I do get there!” It had seemed to her a matter of course that Tracy would be equal to any emergency--even an armed riot. There was something almost disheartening in this confession of self-doubt. “But at any rate they shall pay for it to-morrow,” he broke out, angrily, a moment later. “Down to the last pennyweight we will have our pound of flesh! My girl,” he added, turning to look into her face, and speaking with deep earnestness, “I never knew what it was before to feel wholly merciless--absolutely without bowels of compassion. But I will not abate so much as the fraction of a hair with these villains. I swear that!” By an odd contradiction, his words raised a vague spirit of compunction within her. “They feel very bitterly,” she ventured to suggest. “It is terrible to be turned out of work in the winter, and with families dependent on that work for bare existence. And then the bringing in of these strange workmen. I suppose that is what--”