Chapter XIX.
Edwin Brothertoft shook off the man’s clutch of horror, and stared southward.
A dull glow, like the light of moonrise through mist, was visible close to the dark line of the horizon.
Instantly, as he looked, the glow deepened. The black mass of the Manor-House appeared against the light. The fire must be in the rear and below. An alarm-gun from the frigate came booming through the silence.
While they stood paralyzed, Edwin Brothertoft sprang down from the mound, tore his daughter from the saddle, and was mounted himself quick as thought.
“I must save her!” he cried, — “your mother, my wife!”
He was gone.
A moment they could see the white horse, like a flash of light, as she flung down the break-neck hill-side.
Then she leaped into the mist, and a moment more they could hear her hoofs clattering.
They stood appalled and speechless.
Heart-beat by heart-beat it seemed that the fire grew intenser. All the world was blotted out for the gazers, except that one red spot, like a displaced moonrise, far to the southward.
Fire was not master yet. Who could say? Only three long miles. He might save her. Other succor might come.
Lucy gave one more look into that ocean of mist where she knew her father was struggling. Then, quick but quiet, she seized poor Jierck Dewitt’s arm.
“Come,” she said; “show me the way, — the shortest way. I will follow my father.”