“Save that child if I can,” flung back Peggy, plunging bravely up the smoke-laden stairway.

In the unfamiliar house, and half blinded and choked by smoke and sulphurous fumes, Peggy had a hard task before her.  But she pluckily plunged forward, feeling her way by the walls, and keeping her head low, where the smoke was not so thick.  As she reached what she deemed was the top of the staircase, she thought she heard a tiny voice crying out in alarm.

Following the direction of the sounds, she staggered along a hallway and then reeled into an open door.  The smoke was not so thick in the room, but its fumes were heavy enough.  In a crib in one corner lay a child of about two years of age.  Its rose-leaf of a face was wrinkled up in its efforts to make its terrified little voice heard.

Peggy darted upon it and hugged it close to her.  Then, with renewed courage, she started to make her way back again.  But more smoke than ever was rolling along the passage, and it was a hard task.

“I must do it—­I must,” Peggy kept saying to herself, clinging the while to the terrified child.

But at the head of the staircase the conditions appalled her.  The smoke was thick as a blanket there.  Yet plunge through it, Peggy knew she must.  Still holding the child tightly, she bravely entered the dense smother, stooping as low as she dared.

But before she had taken more than two steps in the obscurity, a dreadful feeling, as if a hand was at her throat and choking her, overcame the girl.  She tried to call out, but she could not.  Her head was reeling, her eyes blinded.  All at once something in her head seemed to snap with a loud report.  Still clutching her little burden tightly, Peggy plunged forward dizzily—­and knew no more.

CHAPTER VI.

Farmer Galloway’s “Safe Deposit.”

When she came to herself again, it was in a confusion of voices and sounds of hurrying footsteps.  She was lying on a lounge in a stuffy “best” parlor, which smelled as moldy as “best” parlors in farm-houses are wont to do.  Bending over her was the angular woman who had entered just as the bolt of lightning, that had caused all the trouble, struck the house.

“Is—­is the baby all right?” asked Peggy, as she took in her surroundings.

“Yes, thanks to you, my dear.  Oh, how can I ever thank you?” exclaimed the woman, a thrill of real gratitude in her voice.  “And the fire is out, too.  My husband and his men had been at work in a distant field and were sheltering themselves under a shed.  I had just taken some water to them when the storm broke.  When they saw the big flash and heard the crash, they knew that something right around the house must have been struck.  They ran through the storm as fast as they could, and got here in time to put out the flames.”

“And Jess and Jimsy and——­”