The chorus of shrieks became now almost a worse storm within than the tempest of fire which was raging without.  The women were wild.  It was an awful moment for everybody.  The fire had full possession on both sides of the road, viciously sparkling and crackling and throwing out jets of flames and volumes of smoke, threatening to dispute the way with the stage coach; yet through it lay the only way to safety.  It could not be borne long; the horses, urged by a hand that knew how to apply all means of stimulus and spared none, drew the coach along at a furious speed.  The speed alone was distracting to the poor women, who had never known the like; the coach seemed to them, doubtless, hastening to destruction.  Their shrieks were uncontrollable; and indeed no topics of comfort could be urged, when manifestly they were fleeing for their lives from the fire, and the fire on every side, before and behind them was threatening with fearful assertion of power that they should not escape.  How swiftly thoughts careered through the mind of the one silent member of the company—­thoughts like those quick flashed of flame, those dark curls of smoke.  The questions she had been debating two hours before—­were they all to have one short, sharp answer?—­And what would become of her then?  Were such days as the one before yesterday forever ended?  How would it feel to be caught and wreathed about like one of those pines—­how would Mr. Rollo feel to see it—­and what if all the rest should be dead, there in the fire, and she only half dead; together with a strange impatience to know the worst and endure the worst.  She had drawn back a little from the window, driven in by the scorching air, but looked out still with both hands up to shield her eyes.  She did not know into what pitiful lines her mouth had shaped itself, nor what faintness and sickness were creeping over her with every breath of that smoke.  The time was, after all, not long; but in the thickest of the fire, when the smoke literally choked up the way before the horses’ eyes, the animals suddenly stopped; from a furious speed, the coach came to a blank stand-still.  A voice was heard from the coach-box cheering the horses—­but the dead pause continued.  And now when the rattle of the wheels ceased, the sweep of the fiery storm could be heard and felt.  A wind had risen, or more likely was created by the great draught of the fire; and its rush through the woods, driving the flames before it, and catching up the clouds of smoke to pile them upon the faces and throats of the travellers was with a hiss and a fury and a blinding which came like the malice of a spiteful thing.  It was almost impossible to breathe; and yet the coach stood still!  A half-minute seemed the growth of a year.  The women became frantic; Mr. Falkirk kept them in the coach by the sheer exertion of force.  Wych Hazel in vain strained her eyes to see through the smoke what the detaining cause was.

The horses had been scared at last by the fire crackling and snapping in their faces, and confounded by the clouds of smoke.  Bewildered, they had stopped short; and voice and whip were powerless against fear.  That was a moment never to be forgotten, at least by those withinside the stage-coach, who could do nothing but wait and scream.