By degrees she felt a little less dazed and helpless. She tried to put out her hands to raise herself, but she could not move them. They were fastened to her sides. She saw then that she was wrapped in a blanket. "What--ever--has happened!" she asked sharply. "There has been an accident--a fire. Your house is on fire--didn't you know?" "Fire!--our house--on fire!" Mona sat upright, and looked about her in a bewildered way. Could it be that she was having those dreadful things said to her. She had often wondered how people felt, what they thought-- what they did, when they had suddenly to face so dreadful a thing. "Where's granny?" she asked abruptly--almost violently. There was a moment's silence. Then Patty Row's mother said in a breathless, hesitating way, "Nobody--no one knows yet, Mona. Nor how the house was set on fire," she added, hastily, as though anxious to give Mona something else to think of. "Some say the wind must have blown down the kitchen chimney and scattered some red-hot coals about the floor." "But 'twas the top part of the house that was burning first along," broke in old Tom Harris. "Mrs. Carne saw smoke and fire coming through the bedroom windows and the roof." "The top part!--where granny was sleeping!" Mona threw open the blanket and struggled to her feet. "Oh, do stop talking, and tell me--hasn't anyone found granny?" Her question ended almost in a scream. "They--they're getting her----" said somebody. The rest preserved an ominous silence. "There's a chain of men handing up buckets of water through the back garden," said someone else, as though trying to distract her thoughts. "They'll soon get the fiercest of the fire down." "But--but think of granny. We can't wait for that. She's in the fire all this time. She was in bed. Hasn't anyone been to her? Oh, they must have. They can't have left her--an old woman--to save herself!" Mona was beside herself with the horror of the thing. "They tried," said Mrs. Row, gently, "but they were beaten back. Mrs. Carne tried until she was--There! She's gone--Mona's gone!" Her explanation ended in a scream. "Oh, stop her--somebody, do, she'll be killed." "It'd have been sensibler to have told her the truth at once," said Tom Harris, impatiently. "She's got to know, poor maid. Now we shall have another life thrown away, more than likely, and Mrs. Carne with a broken leg, and nobody knows what other damage."