The group broke apart, as the exigencies of the road traveled required. Now and again some conversation passed between the occupants of the carriage and the horsemen who loosely grouped about it as they advanced. The great coach swayed its way on up through the woods into the hills, over a road never too good and now worse than usual. They had thirty miles or more to drive, most of it after dark. Could they make that distance in time? Dunwody, moody, silent, yet tense, keyed to the highest point, now made little comment. Even when left alone, he ventured upon no intimate theme with his companion in the coach; nor did she in turn speak upon any subject which admitted argument. Once she congratulated him upon his recovery from what had seemed so dangerous a hurt. "But that is nothing now," he said. "I got off better than I had any right,--limp a little, maybe, but they say that even that is mostly a matter of habit now. Jamieson says his fiddle string may have slipped a little! And you?" "Oh, perfectly well," she answered. "I even think I may be happy--you know, I must start my French and English classes before long." Silent now in part as to matters present, wholly silent as to matters past, these two went on into the night, neither loosing the tight rein on self. Swaying and jolting its way upward and outward into the wilder country, the coach at last had so far plunged into the night that they were almost within touch of the valley in which lay the Dunwody lands. Eleazar, the trapper, rode on the box with the negro driver who had been impressed into service. It was the old trapper who at length called for a halt. "Listen!" said he. "What is that?" Dunwody heard him, and as the coach pulled up, thrust his head out of the window. The sound was repeated. "I hear it!" cried he. "Rifle firing! I'm afraid we're going to be too late. Drive on, there, fast!" Finally they reached the point in the road just below the shut-in, where the hills fell back in the approach to the little circular valley. Dunwody's gaze was bent eagerly out and ahead. "My God!" he exclaimed, at length. "We are too late! Look!" At the same moment there came excited cries from the horsemen who followed. Easily visible now against the black background of the night, there showed a flower of light, rising and falling, strengthening. "Drive!" cried Dunwody; and now the sting of the lash urged on the weary team. They swung around the turn of the shut-in, and came at full speed into the approach across the valley. Before them lay the great Tallwoods mansion house. It stood before them a pillar of fire, prophetic, it might be repeated, of a vast and cleansing catastrophe soon to come to that state and this nation; a catastrophe which alone could lay the specter in our nation's house.