But she got no farther, for a moment later the end wall, on which Henry Burns had stood shortly before, was seen to sway violently. Then, with a wrenching and tearing, as of beams split apart, and with grinding of timbers, it collapsed upon the roof of the old hotel, and a few minutes later that, too, was all ablaze, and there was nought to be done by any one but to stand helplessly and see the flames devour everything. When morning lighted up the spot where on the previous day the hotel had stood, the pride of the village and the boast of Colonel Witham, the sun shone only on a charred and blackened heap of ruins. CHAPTER XVIII. THE FLIGHT Southport, rudely awakened from sleep as it had been, and awake all the rest of the night by so unusual and stirring an event as a fire, was too much excited to go back to its slumbers, but stayed awake through the morning hours to discuss it. A group of villagers hung around the grocery-store all day long, adjourning only now and then to journey to the spot where the hotel had been, where they stood solemnly contemplating the ruins, with all-absorbing interest in the twisted and distorted fragments that still bore some resemblance to whatever part they had constituted in the structure of the building. There were dozens of theories advanced as to how the fire had started. The oil had exploded from spontaneous combustion; rats had set the blaze by gnawing at matches, and so on through the list of ordinary causes of fires; but as for Colonel Witham, with his customary suspicion of all human nature, he was sure of one theory, because it was his own, and that was, that the hotel had been set on fire. This he doggedly asserted and as stubbornly maintained. The hotel could not have set itself afire; therefore, some one must have done it. This was as plain as daylight to the colonel. He fiercely questioned John Carr as to whether any lights had been left burning, but John Carr was loud and persistent in his assurances that the hotel had been as dark as Egypt when he had retired for the night. But throughout all the discussion, that ranged through cottages, along the streets, and that spread throughout the length and breadth of the island, there were six boys who were silent, who took no part in it, but who kept away from wherever a group was gathered. They were a serious-looking lot of boys as they assembled on the shore in front of the tent; so much of anxiety and apprehension showing unconcealed in their faces that one happening upon their council might have read therein a key to the mystery. It would have been a mistaken clue, of course, but it would have sufficed for the village and for Colonel Witham. For a few moments not one of them spoke, though each boyish brain was turning the one awful subject over and over, vainly seeking the answer for a problem that defied all attempts at solution. Finally Bob broke the awful silence.