“My God!” he muttered.  “Too hot!  Got to cool that down.”

Then he saw the tank and the dangling hose, and remembered that he had not filled the boiler.  Taking down the hose, he opened the watercock, stuck in the nozzle, and turned on the water full force.  Windows were broken across the street.  Parts of the fire-box, boiler, and fire flew everywhere.  The walls blew out, the roof lifted and came down, the fire raged among the new, dry timbers of the mill.

When her windows blew in, Kate was thrown from her bed to the floor.  She lay stunned a second, then dragged herself up to look across the street.  There was nothing where the low white expanse of roof had spread an hour before, while a red glare was creeping everywhere over the ground.  She ran to George’s room and found it empty.  She ran to the kitchen, calling him, and found the back door standing open.  She rushed back to her room and began trying to put on her dress over her nightrobe.  She could not control her shaking fingers, while at each step she cut her feet on broken glass.  She reached the front door as the children came screaming with fright.  In turning to warn them about the glass, she stumbled on the top step, pitched forward headlong, then lay still.  The neighbours carried her back to her bed, called the doctor, and then saved all the logs in the yard they could.  The following day, when the fire had burned itself out, the undertaker hunted assiduously, but nothing could be found to justify a funeral.

“For A good girl”

For a week, Kate lay so dazed she did not care whether she lived or died; then she slowly crept back to life, realizing that whether she cared or not, she must live.  She was too young, too strong, to quit because she was soul sick; she had to go on.  She had life to face for herself and her children.  She wondered dully about her people, but as none of the neighbours who had taken care of her said anything concerning them, she realized that they had not been there.  At first she was almost glad.  They were forthright people.  They would have had something to say; they would have said it tersely and to the point.

Adam, 3d, had wound up her affairs speedily by selling the logs he had bought for her to the Hartley mills, paying what she owed, and depositing the remainder in the Hartley Bank to her credit; but that remainder was less than one hundred dollars.  That winter was a long, dreadful nightmare to Kate.  Had it not been for Aunt Ollie, they would have been hungry some of the time; they were cold most of it.  For weeks Kate thought of sending for her mother, or going to her; then as not even a line came from any of her family, she realized that they resented her losing that much Bates money so bitterly that they wished to have nothing to do with her.  Often she sat for hours staring straight before her, trying to straighten out the tangle she had made of her life.  As if she had not suffered enough in the reality of living, she now lived over in day and night dreams, hour by hour, her time with George Holt, and gained nothing thereby.