" The lawyer thought she meant that her dead brother was cold. As
to the fire, when he saw Monty, it did not astonish him; but how came
they both there through the guard?
The frame buildings, their light clapboards dried by the summer sun,
burned furiously, and the flames roared in the rising wind. The sheds
and stables caught; the fire ran over the ground, in spite of the dew,
catching in shrubs and fallen timber, and even climbing up living trees.
Back the beholders were driven, as far as Bill Richards' post, by the
terrible glare and heat of the conflagration. Leaving Bigglethorpe on
sentry, and Rufus over the prisoner, Harry came running up to learn what
was the matter, and to tell of noises like human voices and hammer blows
behind the slab of rock. Then, as the fire in the house burned down to
the ground, there was an explosion that seemed to shake the earth, and a
column of fire sprang up the standing chimney, side by side with another
less lofty and more diffused from the right of the building. Report
after report followed, and the whole party, half terror-stricken,
descended to the beach.
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