‘What’s he doing? what are we waiting for?  Can you see?’ he asked impatiently.

‘Yes—­they are trying to find out which way to go, sir.’

Mr. Falkirk made a movement as if to get out himself; then checked it, seeing the helpless bevy of women who were dependent on him and now in the utmost perturbation.  Standing still tried their nerves.  To keep order withinside the coach was as much as he could attend to.  Cries and moans and questions of involved incoherency, poured upon him.  Would they ever get home? would the fire catch the coach? would it frighten the horses? what were they stopping for?—­were some of the simplest inquiries that Mr. Falkirk had to hear and answer; in the midst of which one of the ladies assured herself and him that if ’Isaiah had come along with them they would never have got into such a fix.’  Mrs. Saddler Mr. Falkirk peremptorily silenced; the others he soothed as best he might; and all the while Wych Hazel watched the signs without, and followed the climber in the pine tree, following him in his venturesome ascent and descent, which were both made with no lack of daring.  He was on the ground at last, swinging himself from the end of a pine branch which he had compelled into his service; he came straight to Mr. Falkirk, heated, but mentally as cool as ever.

‘I see our way,’ he said, ’I am going on the box myself.  Don’t be concerned.  I have driven a post-coach in England.’

He looked across to Wych Hazel, as he spoke, and his eye carried the promise again.  Wych Hazel met his look, though with no answer in her own; fear, or self-control, or something back of both, made the very lines of her face still; only a sort of shiver of feeling passed over them as he said, ’Don’t be concerned.’  All this passes in a second; then Rollo is on the box with the stage driver and the stage is in motion again.  But it is motion straight on to where Wych Hazel has seen that the smoke is thickest.  The horses go fast; they know that another hand has the reins; the ground is swiftly travelled over.  Now the puffs of smoke roll out round and defined from the burning woodland; and then, above the rattle of wheels and tread of hoofs, is heard another sound,—­a spiteful snapping and crackling, faint but increasing.  Can the air be borne?—­it is hard to breathe; and flame, yes, flame is leaping from the dried leaves and curling out here and there from a tree.  Mrs. Saddler put her head out of the coach.

‘Oh, sir!’ she shrieked, ’he is taking us right into it!  O stop him! we’ll be burned, sure! it’s all fire—­it’s all fire!’