Yet his hands clasped only a slight, childish form in a white gown. It was too dark in the room to see who it could be until Mollie lit the candle which stood always by their bedside.

Then they both discovered Bobbin, not walking in her sleep as they supposed, but with her face very white and making queer little movements with her hands and lips.

"The child is frightened; something must have to disturbed her," Billy suggested, still only half awake himself.

But Mollie had jumped out of bed and was already on her way to the nursery. Naturally she presumed that something had happened to one of the children and that Bobbin had come to call her. Poor little girl, she had no other way of calling than to touch with her hands!

However, half way down the hall Mollie turned and ran back into her own bedroom.

"Get up please, Billy, in a hurry, won't you? I do believe I smell smoke somewhere in the house. Something must be on fire. Of course Bobbin could detect it before the rest of us; she is sure to have a keener sense of smell."

A moment later and Billy had jumped almost all the way down the long flight of old-fashioned country stairs.

"Don't be frightened, dear, but get the children up and put clothes on them," he shouted back. "It is too cold for you to go out in the snow undressed and we are miles from a neighbor. I will call the men and we will fight the fire. Don't forget to waken Polly!"

With this last injunction in her mind Mollie stopped to hammer on her sister's door before she ran on to the nursery.

She was certain that she heard Polly answer her. Besides, by this time the house was filled with an excited tumult, Mollie's little boys were dancing about in the hall, half pleased and half frightened with the excitement, their nurse was scolding and crying and vainly endeavoring to dress the small Polly.

So it was plain enough that for the next few minutes Mollie had difficulty enough in keeping her wits about her and in quieting her family, especially as every now and then she could hear her husband's voice from below calling on her to hurry as quickly as possible.

Only Bobbin at once slipped into a heavy, long coat and shoes and rushed back to Polly's room. The door was locked, but she pounded patiently and automatically on the outside, unable, of course, to hear the answering voice from within.

Then there came a sudden hoa.r.s.e shout from below stairs and in that instant Mr. Webster, dashing up a flight of steps almost at one bound, returned with the baby in his arms, while Mollie led one of the small boys and the nurse the other.

"Come on, you and Polly, at once!" Mollie cried, waving her hands and pointing toward the great hall to show that there was no time for further delay.

But this was evident enough to Bobbin without being told, for the smoke was pouring out of the parlor into the hall and coming up the stairs like a great advancing army.

However, Bobbin would not leave her post. There was not the faintest thought in her brain of ever stirring from without that locked door until the one person whom she loved in the world should come forth from it. And she was not conscious of feeling particularly afraid, only she could not understand why Miss O'Neill would not hurry.

A moment later, however, and Bobbin found herself outside standing alone in the snow.

There had been no possible outcry on her part, no explanation and no argument, of course. Only when one of the farm laborers rushing up-stairs had seen the little girl loitering in the hall, without saying by your leave, he had seized her in his arms and borne her struggling through the now stifling smoke.

Outside in the yard Bobbin for a moment felt weak and confused. For all at once the place seemed to be swarming with excited people.

There were a dozen men and their families living on the big farm with houses of their own. And now the ringing of a great bell had brought them all out with their wives and children as well.

The women were swarming about Mollie with their children, crying, gesticulating, talking. It was a clear, white night and Bobbin could see them easily. The men were engaged in rushing back and forth with pails of water, fearing that the water might freeze on the way.

But there was nowhere any sign of Polly!

Bobbin did not try to attract attention. In the instant it did not even occur to her that she might not have been able to make any one understand. Simply and without being seen she slipped into one of the big front windows, opened by the men as a pa.s.sage-way, and started fighting her way again up the black, smoke-laden steps.

There seemed to be no more air, it was all a thick, foggy substance that got into your throat and made you unable to breathe and into your eyes so that you could not see. But Bobbin went resolutely on.

She clung to the banisters and dragged herself upward, either too stupid or too intent on her errand to suffer fear. Nevertheless, through the smoke she could see that long tongues of flame were bursting out of the doors of the back parlor into the hall beneath her.

Only, once more at Polly's bedroom door Bobbin lost heart and the only real terror she ever remembered enduring seized hold on her. For Polly's door was still locked and she had no means of making her hear.

All that she could accomplish by hammering and kicking she had done before. Of course, she tried this again, yet the door did not open and so far as Bobbin could know there was no movement from the inside.

Yet next Miss O'Neill's room there was her own room and the door of this was unfastened. With a kind of half-blind impulse Bobbin staggered into it. She had no clear or definite idea of what she intended doing, yet fortunately this room was only partially filled with smoke so that she could in a measure see her way about.

There in the corner stood an old-fashioned, heavy wooden chair. Almost instinctively Bobbin seized hold on it. She was curiously strong, doubly so to any other girl of her age, since she had lived outdoors always like a little barbarian. Besides, there was nothing else that could be done. She must break down Miss O'Neill's door.

With all her force the girl hurled the heavy chair against the oak door.

There were a few marks on its surface, yet the door remained absolutely firm, for the Webster house had been built in the days when wood had been plentiful in the New Hampshire hills and homes had been expected to endure.

Nevertheless Bobbin pounded again and again, almost automatically her thin arms seemed to work, and yet all her effort was without avail.

During these moments no one can guess exactly what emotions tore at the girl's heart. If only she could have cried out her alarm and her desire, surely she would have been answered!

Bobbin's face worked strangely, there was a kind of throbbing in her ears and her lips moved. "Polly!" she called in a hoa.r.s.e little whisper, and this was the first word she had ever spoken in her life.

Inside in her smoke-filled room Polly O'Neill could not possibly have heard her. For the past fifteen minutes, during all the excitement due to the fire, she had been lying upon her bed in a stifled condition. For no one had realized that as Polly's room was immediately above the back parlor, where the fire had been smouldering ever since the children had gone up-stairs to bed, her room had been first to be filled with smoke.

Yet the smoke had come so slowly, so gradually as she lay in a kind of exhausted sleep, that she had been stupefied rather than awakened by it.

Now was it the miracle rather than the sound of Bobbin's speaking her name that penetrated slowly to Polly's consciousness, or was it the noise of the repeated pounding of the heavy chair against her door?

Whatever the cause, she came back to the world, choking, blinded, fighting with her hands to keep off the black substance that was crowding into her lungs.

Then somehow she managed to crawl across her room, remembering that the smoke would be denser higher up in the atmosphere. Unlocking the door, she turned the handle and Bobbin caught her as she half fell into the hall.

With a quick movement the girl put her arm about the older woman's waist and started for the stairway, for the hall was dense with smoke and now and then a tongue of flame leaped up from below and seemed to dance for a moment in the air about them.

It was overpowering, unendurable. Polly was already dazed and exhausted and her lungs were always delicate. At the top of the stairs she became a dead weight on her companion's arms. Besides, by this time Bobbin too was very weary.

CHAPTER XX

THE DISCOVERY

A FEW moments after Bobbin's disappearance inside the house Mollie O'Neill had suddenly torn herself away from the people closed about her in their effort to hide from her eyes the possible destruction of her home.

She looked searchingly around her.

"Polly!" she called, "Polly!" For the first moment since the fire started, she seemed to be losing her self-control. For all at once it had come to her in a terrifying flash that she had not caught a glimpse of her sister since the moment when she had gone up-stairs at eight o'clock to retire to bed.

Nevertheless Polly must be somewhere near by. She must have heard her calling and she had had plenty of time to escape, more than any one else, as she had no one else to look after save herself. Yet it was not like Polly not to have come at once to her aid with the children!

Mollie ran here and there about the yard, still crying out her sister's name, horror and conviction growing upon her at every step.

At last she caught sight of her husband directing half a dozen men and caught hold of his arm.