Slipping through the crowd in the darkness, Mona, in a perfect frenzy of fear, dashed into the house. All she was conscious of was hot anger against all those who stood about talking and looking on and doing nothing, while granny lay helpless in her bed suffocating, perhaps burning; were they mad!--did they want granny to die?--didn't they care, that no one made any attempt to save her. Through the semi-darkness, the haze of smoke and steam, she heard people, and voices, but she could not see anyone. The heat was fearful, and the smell of burning made her feel sick. She groped her way stumblingly through the kitchen. The furniture seemed to her to be scattered about as though on purpose to hinder her, but she kept along by the dressers as well as she could. They would be a guide, she thought. "Poor tea-set! There will be little of it left now." Her fingers touched something soft. Lucy's stocks, still in the vase. At last she found herself at the foot of the staircase. The door was closed. Someone had wisely shut it to check the rush of air up it. After a struggle, Mona managed to open it again, and fell back before the overpowering heat and the smoke which choked and blinded her. She clapped her hand over her nose and mouth, and crouching down, dragged herself a little way up, lying almost flat on her face, she was so desperate now with the horror of it all, beside herself. Ahead of her was what looked like a blazing furnace. All around her was an awful roaring, the noise of burning, broken into every now and again by a crash, after which the red light blazed out brighter, and the roaring redoubled. How could anyone live in such a furnace. An awful cry of despair broke from her parched throat. "Granny!" she screamed. "Oh, granny! Where are you? I can't reach--" Another crash, and a blazing beam fell across the head of the burning staircase. "Granny! Oh, God save my----" But before she could finish she was seized by strong arms and lifted up, and then darkness fell on her brain, and she knew no more. CHAPTER XIII. When poor Lucy Carne next opened her eyes and came back with a sigh to the horrors and suffering of which she had for a time been mercifully unconscious, her first thought was for her husband. "Has the boat come in? Did the storm die down?--or did it get worse? Has anyone heard or seen anything of my husband?" She panted feebly. But before they could answer her, she had floated off again into a troubled delirium. "Oh, the wind! Oh, the awful wind!" she kept on repeating. "Oh, can't anything stop it! It's fanning the flames to fury; it's blowing them towards granny's room. Oh, the noise--I must find her--I must save her-- she's so feeble. Oh, granny! Granny!" Her voice would end in a scream, followed by a burst of tears; then she would begin again. Once or twice she had recovered consciousness, and then had asked for her husband or Mona. "Is she badly hurt?--will she get over it?"