By this time the names had taken firm hold upon the entire structure.  Smoke tinged with red lines poured through the great double doors of the mansion house.  Yet even as she met the act with an exclamation of horror, Josephine saw Dunwody fling away his weapons, run to the great doors and crash through them, apparently bent upon reaching some point deep in the interior.

Others saw this, and joined in her cry of terror.  The interior of the hall, thus disclosed by the opening of the doors, seemed but a mass of flames.  An instant later, Dunwody staggered back, his arm across his face.  His hair was smoking, the mustaches half burned from his lips.  He gasped for breath, but, revived by air, drew his coat across his mouth and once again dashed back.  Josephine, standing with hands clasped, her eyes filled with terror, expected never to see him emerge alive.

He was scarcely more than alive when once more he came back, blinded and staggering.  This time arms reached out to him, steadied him, dragged him from the gallery, through the enshrouding smoke, to a place of safety.

He bore something shielded, concealed in his arms—­something, which now he carried tenderly and placed down away from the sight of others, behind the shade of a protecting clump of shrubbery.  His breath, labored, sobbing, showed his distress.  They caught him again when he staggered back, dragged him to a point somewhat removed, upon the lawn.  All the time he struggled, as though once more to dash back into the flames, or as though to find his weapons.  He was sobbing, half crazed, horribly burned, but seemingly unmindful of his hurts.

The fire went on steadily with its work, the more rapidly now that the opening of the front doors had admitted air to the interior.  The construction of the house, with a wide central hall, and stairways leading up almost to the roof, made an admirable arrangement for a conflagration.  No living being, even though armed with the best of fire fighting apparatus, could have survived in that blazing interior.  All they could do, since even a bucket brigade was out of the question here, was to stand and watch for the end.  Some called for ladders, but by accident or design, no ladders were found where they should have been.  Men ran about like ants.  None knew anything of time’s passing.  No impression remained on their minds save the fascinating picture of this tall pillar of the fire.

Dunwody ceased to struggle with those who restrained him.  He walked apart, near to the little clump of shrubs.  He dropped to the ground, his face in his hands.

“What do you reckon that thah was he brung out in his arms, that time?” demanded Mr. William Jones, after a time, of a neighbor who met him a little apart.  “Say, you reckon that was folks?  Anybody in there?  Anybody over—­thah?  Was that a bed—­folded up like—­’bout like a crib, say?  I’m skeered to go look, somehow.”