A few men and women were gathered about the Westcott farm-house, gazing helplessly at the flame that thrust sudden tongues of fierce yellow through the shattered windows. Mrs. Slater, among them, moved, a small fluttering-eyed plump woman, back and forth, gesticulating but saying nothing. Her mouth opened and shut, a round black hole in the light of conflagration, but no sounds issued forth. In the first place, she could find nobody with whom to converse. There was Lucinda, sitting awkwardly in Humphrey Lathrop’s old buggy, holding the somewhat startled horse tight-reined, as she watched the burning house, but Lucinda was speechless. She had nothing to say and she conveyed this to Mrs. Slater by a cold vinegary downward stare whenever the plump little woman wandered near the buggy. She was there to observe and then to report to Humphrey Lathrop who sat at home, a helpless mountain, waiting eagerly for news. As Dreeme and Walden Slater circled the house and came out on the Leeminster Road below it Mrs. Slater ran toward them.

“Where in the land’s sake....” she began.

Walden Slater silenced her with a look.

He brushed by her speechless and she followed in his wake, a small fluttering-eyed creature. Behind them came Dreeme, unshaven, mud-splashed, soaked, bare-footed. The farmer walked directly to Humphrey Lathrop’s buggy.

“Get out, Lucinda,” he said.

Lucinda turned her thin face down at him in wrathful amazement. She opened her mouth to retort and then she saw the senseless form of Deborah. Without a word she climbed from the buggy and, turning, lifted a rug to draw over Deborah as the farmer deposited her in the seat.

“I’ll drive her down to Humphrey’s,” said Lathrop’s housekeeper.

“Will she be safe?” interposed Dreeme hastily. He had visions of men leaping out from the side of the road. “Perhaps I’d ...”

“She’ll be safe,” snapped Lucinda.

Without another word she climbed back into the buggy, picked up the reins, clucked to the horse, and the revolving wheels grated on the road. Dreeme stood watching the retreating carriage dubiously until he felt Walden Slater touch him on the arm. He turned with the farmer and they walked up the road toward the burning house.

“What time?” said Slater laconically to the group of watchers.

“’Bout two-thirty,” answered one of the men.

“What time is it now?” questioned the farmer.

“’Bout three,” the man returned.

Dreeme turned with Slater and watched the fire.

The flames, darting out of the windows, licked upward against the walls and the white paint sweated and bubbled in the fierce heat. A low roaring like the roaring in a wood-furnace reached the ears of the watchers. It was obviously too late to do anything. The entire interior of the farm-house was burning. Dreeme could imagine the books in the library blackening in the smoke, their pages flaming along the edges and then spurting up furiously as the tomes tumbled forward to the floor. Small fiends screamed in the heat of those books. The wax figures were melting, running into mere blobs, then vanishing as the fire ate them up. The table at which Westcott had studied night after night was festooned with a dazzling magic. Even the window through which Martha Westcott had gazed was ringed with a bright frame of splendor. Low crashes reached the ears of the helpless watchers as objects within the cauldron of the building fell before the buffets of victorious flame. The wind blew; the flames darted up to heaven; a bellying scarlet-hued balloon of heavy smoke seemed attached to the house by ropes of yellow flame. It tugged at the dwelling, strove to lift it upward with an enormous strength. The house groaned and cracked. The rumbling of destruction continued within the white blistered walls.

It seemed as though any minute the house would be torn from its foundations and lifted high in the air leaving beneath it a flickering-tongued bonfire, a bonfire gigantic in size and unbearable in heat. The long ell of the kitchen was a mass of ochre flame now, a dancing madness against the darkness of the sky. Showers of sparks shot upward, dipped, and veered downward again like fire-works. With a rumbling crash the roof of the kitchen fell in and the detonation of the collapse was like a discharge of cannon in Dreeme’s ears. These old houses burned quickly. Time had seasoned the wood for destruction, dried it out, honeycombed it with the tiny tunnels of wood-borers so that the bright spirit of destruction might dart along it. It was all going now, chairs, tables, wax flowers beneath glass, family portraits. The spirit of things was turning all this into a heap of smoking débris, of blackened jagged beams and heaps of fuming ashes. Dreeme stood in the glare of the flame beside Walden Slater and his face burned with the heat. His few garments smoked and dried. His skin seemed crawling and parched. He felt as though he were watching the fires of Tophet. He glanced about him at the group of sober-faced observers and suddenly caught his breath in his throat. Leaning sideways he struck his hand against Walden Slater’s arm and when the farmer turned his slow eyes toward him he indicated an eddying knot of men some distance from the conflagration. The farmer studied them with narrowed lids but said nothing. Then, with the utmost calm, he resumed his attention of the burning house. He seemed to be watching the second-floor windows, windows through which wisps of curling smoke projected like lost snakes. Dreeme was faintly astonished at his lack of interest in the men toward whom he had directed Walden Slater’s attention. For his own part, he continued to keep a watch on them, observing them sideways through the corners of his eyes.

These men were not so far away but what he could recognize them. They were muddy and distracted in demeanor, uncertain of themselves, self-conscious of their presence in the light of the burning building. They clung together as though for common strength. In the center of the small group Dreeme could see the lanky figure of Bidwell and beside him was the white-haired Corey. Threading the clustered group, talking first to one man and then to another, was Lacy, his carbuncular nose glowing in the fierce light of the flames. How they had emerged on the road, whether they had followed along the narrow path from Nigger Swamp or found some secret passage directly across the sunken marsh were mysteries to Dreeme. He did not care greatly how they had reached this spot. The main thing was that they were here, that they dared show themselves in public. He wondered if others in that mad group had followed Lathrop’s buggy to town and this conjecture aroused an angry fear in him. He stared boldly at the group and scowled. These men were equally aware of him and Walden Slater for they persisted in glancing toward them as they continued their nervous conversation. Once Bidwell gesticulated openly toward the young doctor. They were strong men, broad-shouldered, browned by changing seasons, hard-sinewed and tight-lipped. Still Dreeme felt no fear, nothing but a righteous fury. A loud crash before him diverted his attention to the farm-house. The right wall of the kitchen had fallen in. When, after observing the shower of flame and sparks, he resumed his observation of the self-conscious knot of men the white-haired Corey was walking slowly toward him. The grave old man continued his approach until he was within a yard of Dreeme and then he turned and surveyed the fire. The young doctor, trembling at the nearness of this man whom he had seen so shortly before in the grasp of a mystic delirium, said nothing although a flood of recriminatory words rose in his throat and quivered on his lips. He thought it peculiar that Walden Slater made no gesture of recognition, that he stood so easily with his attention apparently confined to the blazing building before him. Corey moved a single step sideways toward Dreeme and still keeping his eyes directed before him began to speak. He said:

“Doctor Dreeme, after a great madness comes a great sanity.”

Walden Slater, beside the young doctor, was listening, too, although his expressionless face did not shift from its steadfast inspection of the burning farm-house. Dreeme made no answer to Corey. The old farmer spoke again. He said:

“You have evidently seen what you have seen. You can never see it again.”

He extended one hand as though he were discussing the fire. At a distance the little knot of farmers observed them fixedly. Corey said:

“There are no explanations. The chain is broken. I am an old man, Doctor Dreeme, and I know what I am talking about. I am speaking for a score of men who were lost and who, through a great shock, have found themselves. I cannot tell you what dominated us but the domination has ceased. The valley is cleansed. We are cleansed. We ask for silence.”

There was something behind his words that impressed Dreeme. He opened his mouth to speak but Walden Slater forestalled him. The farmer said:

“We lost our tongues in Nigger Swamp.”

Corey observed the fire fiercely.

“What’s done is done,” added Slater mildly.

“Let what’s done rot with the body by the stone,” said Corey softly.

After a moment he withdrew quietly and a second later Dreeme saw him back among the little knot of perturbed men. There was a brief conversation and then calm blank faces resumed their observation of the flame-wreathed Westcott farm-house.

“What does this mean?” inquired Dreeme of Walden Slater.

The farmer shifted his feet.

“It means what it means,” he said. “Let that be enough for you, Doctor.”

Dreeme wondered if it meant no retribution for these men who were willing to connive at the destruction of a human being. He opened his mouth to say something to this effect when the farmer snatched at him. At the same time an exclamation of mingled surprise and horror rose from the group of people in the road. Dreeme turned hastily toward the burning house.

In one of the upper windows through which the thin snakes of curling smoke had crept stood a man. There was flame in that window now and he was silhouetted against the bright flare. He seemed just about to leap for one foot was on the sill of the window and one heavy arm was raised against the side of the house. Dreeme saw the fierce light play over a cloven skull and lowered forehead. He saw, in the man’s other hand, a black book clutched tightly. All this he saw in an instant for even as he looked the window-sill seemed to cave inward to crumbling fire and the figure, black against the light, fell backward, one hand snatching desperately at the air. The next instant a great puff of flame surged through the vacant window. There was nothing there, nothing but a roaring cauldron that devoured its own. The destroyed building seemed to emit a great sigh of relief, a hoarse gasp that soared upward and spread out over Marlborough. Dreeme imagined that sigh of relief permeating the air as far as Leeminster, sweeping through the moonlit heavens and driving the intangible mists of mystery before it, cleansing the valley of an old horror. He even pictured a calmness and relief on the attentive and wide-eyed faces that watched, as he did, this instantaneous tragedy. There seemed to be nothing left to say, nothing to do but watch or go home. Walden Slater, after his first instinctive grasp at the young doctor, had said nothing. He stood with his great shoulders bowed, his long lip dangling loose, his coat gaping and, through its opening, the revolver glistening. Dreeme suddenly felt exhausted, a complete exhaustion that was flesh-weariness and great relief mingled.