For some time there was no conversation in the sleigh. The horses sped evenly forward, with their heads well in the air, as if they too were excited by the unnatural glare in the sky ahead. Before long there was added to the hurried regular beating of their hoofs upon the hard-packed track another sound—the snoring of the ’squire on the seat behind.

There was a sense of melting in the air. Save where the intense glow of the conflagration lit up the sky with a fan-like spread of ruddy luminance—fierce orange at the central base, and then through an expanse of vermilion, rose, and cherry to deepening crimsons and dull reddish purples—the heavens hung black with snow-laden clouds. A pleasant, moist night-breeze came softly across the valley, bearing ever and again a solitary flake of snow. The effect of this mild wind was so grateful to Jessica’s face, now once more burning with an inner heat, that she gave no thought to a curious difficulty in breathing which was growing upon her.

“The scoundrels shall pay dear for this,” Reuben said to her, between set teeth, when there came a place in the road where the horses must be allowed to walk up hill.

“I’m sure I hope so,” she said, quite in his spirit.

The husky note in her voice caught his attention. “Are you sure you are bundled up warm enough?” he asked with solicitude, pulling the robe higher about her.

“Oh, yes. I’m not very well. I caught a heavy cold yesterday,” she answered. “But it will be nothing, if only we can get there in time.”

It struck her as strange when Reuben presently replied, putting the whip once more to the horses: “God only knows what can be done when I do get there!” It had seemed to her a matter of course that Tracy would be equal to any emergency—even an armed riot. There was something almost disheartening in this confession of self-doubt.

“But at any rate they shall pay for it to-morrow,” he broke out, angrily, a moment later. “Down to the last pennyweight we will have our pound of flesh! My girl,” he added, turning to look into her face, and speaking with deep earnestness, “I never knew what it was before to feel wholly merciless—absolutely without bowels of compassion. But I will not abate so much as the fraction of a hair with these villains. I swear that!”

By an odd contradiction, his words raised a vague spirit of compunction within her. “They feel very bitterly,” she ventured to suggest. “It is terrible to be turned out of work in the winter, and with families dependent on that work for bare existence. And then the bringing in of these strange workmen. I suppose that is what—”

Reuben interrupted her with an abrupt laugh. “I’m not thinking of them,” he said. “Poor foolish fellows, I don’t wish them any harm. I only pray God they haven’t done too much harm to themselves. No: it’s the swindling scoundrels who are responsible for the mischief—they are the ones I’ll put the clamps onto to-morrow.”

The words conveyed no meaning to her, and she kept silent until he spoke further: “I don’t know whether he told you, but Gedney has brought me to-night the last links needed for a chain of proof which must send all three of these ruffians to State prison. I haven’t had time to examine the papers yet, but he says he’s got them in his pocket there—affidavits from the original inventor of certain machinery, about its original sale, and from others who were a party to it—which makes the whole fraud absolutely clear. I’ll go over them to-night, when we’ve seen this thing through”—pointing vaguely with his whip toward the reddened sky—“and if tomorrow I don’t lay all three of them by the heels, you can have my head for a foot-ball!”

“I don’t understand these things very well,” said Jessica. “Who is it you mean?” It was growing still harder for her to breathe, and sharp pain came in her breast now with almost every respiration. Her head ached, too, so violently that she cared very little indeed who it was that should go to prison tomorrow.

“There are three of them in the scheme,” said the lawyer; “as cold-blooded and deliberate a piece of robbery as ever was planned. First, there’s a New York man named Wendover—they call him a Judge—a smart, subtle, slippery scoundrel if ever there was one. Then there’s Schuyler Tenney—perhaps you know who he is—he’s a big hardware merchant here; and with him in the swindle was—Good heavens! Why, I never thought of it before!”

Reuben had stopped short in his surprise. He began whipping the horses now with a seeming air of exultation, and stole a momentary smile-lit glance toward his companion.

“It’s just occurred to me,” he said. “Curious—I hadn’t given it a thought. Why, my girl, it’s like a special providence. You, too, will have your full revenge—such revenge as you never dreamt of. The third man is Horace Boyce!”

A great wave of cold stupor engulfed the girl’s reason as she took in these words, and her head swam and roared as if in truth she had been plunged headlong into unknown depths of icy water.

When she came to the surface of consciousness again, the horses were still rhythmically racing along the hill-side road overlooking the village. The firelight in the sky had faded down now to a dull pinkish effect like the northern lights. Reuben was chewing an unlighted cigar, and the ’squire was steadily snoring behind them. It had begun to snow.

“You will send them all to prison—surely?” she was able to ask.

“As surely as God made little apples!” was the sententious response.

The girl was cowering under the buffalo-robe in an anguish of mind so terribly intense that her physical pains were all forgotten. Only her throbbing head seemed full of thick blood, and there was such an awful need that she should think clearly! She bit her lips in tortured silence, striving through a myriad of wandering, crowding ideas to lay hold upon something which should be of help.

They had begun to descend the hill—a steep, uneven road full of drifts, beyond which stretched a level mile of highway leading into the village itself—when suddenly a bold thought came to her, which on the instant had shot up, powerful and commanding, into a very tower of resolution. She laid her hand on Reuben’s arm.

“If you don’t mind, I’ll change into the back seat,” she said, in a voice which all her efforts could not keep from shaking. “I’m feeling very ill. It’ll be easier for me there.”

Reuben at once drew up the horses, and the girl, summoning all her strength, managed without his help to get around the side of the sleigh, and under the robe, into the rear seat. The ’squire was sunk in such a profound sleep that she had to push him bodily over into his own half of the space, and the discovery that this did not waken him filled her with so great a delight that all her strength and self-control seemed miraculously to have returned to her.

She had need of them both for the task which she had imposed upon herself, and which now, with infinite caution and trepidation, she set herself about. This was nothing less than to secure the papers which the old ’squire had brought from Cadmus, and which, from something she remembered his having said, must be in the inner pocket of one of his coats. Slowly and deftly she opened button after button of his overcoat, and gently pushed aside the cloth until her hand might have free passage to and from the pocket, where, after careful soundings, she had discovered a bundle of thick papers to be resting. Then whole minutes seemed to pass before, having taken off her glove, she was able to draw this packet out. Once during this operation Reuben half turned to speak to her, and her fright was very great. But she had had the presence of mind to draw the robe high about her, and answer collectedly, and he had palpably suspected nothing. As for Gedney, he never once stirred in his drunken sleep.

The larceny was complete, and Jessica had been able to wrap the old man up again, to button the parcel of papers under her own cloak, and to draw on and fasten her glove once more, before the panting horses had gained the outskirts of the village. She herself was breathing almost as heavily as the animals after their gallop, and, now that the deed was done, lay back wearily in her seat, with pain racking her every joint and muscle, and a sickening dread in her mind lest there should be neither strength nor courage forthcoming for what remained to do.

For a considerable distance down the street no person was visible from whom the eager Tracy could get news of what had happened. At last, however, when the sleigh was within a couple of blocks of what seemed in the distance to be a centre of interest, a man came along who shouted from the sidewalk, in response to Reuben’s questions, sundry leading facts of importance.

A fire had started—probably incendiary—in the basement of the office of the Minster furnaces, some hour or so ago, and had pretty well gutted the building. The firemen were still playing on the ruins. An immense crowd had witnessed the fire, and it was the drunkenest crowd he had ever seen in Thessaly. Where the money came from to buy so much drink, was what puzzled him. The crowd had pretty well cleared off now; some said they had gone up to the Minster house to give its occupants a “horning.” He himself had got his feet wet, and was afraid of the rheumatics if he stayed out any longer. Probably he would get them, as it was. Everybody said that the building was insured, and some folks hinted that the company had it set on fire themselves.

Reuben impatiently whipped up the jaded team at this, with a curt “Much obliged,” and drove at a spanking pace down the street to the scene of the conflagration. There was not much remaining to see. The outer walls of the office building were still gloomily erect, but within nothing was left but a glowing mass of embers about level with the ground. Some firemen were inside the yard, but more were congregated about the water-soaked space where the engine still noisily throbbed, and where hot coffee was being passed around to them. Here, too, there was a report that the crowd had gone up to the Minster house.

The horses tugged vehemently to drag the sleigh over the impedimenta of hose stretched along the street, and over the considerable area of bare stones where the snow had been melted by the heat or washed away by the streams from the hydrants. Then Reuben half rose in his seat to lash them into a last furious gallop, and, snorting with rebellion, they tore onward toward the seminary road.

At the corner, three doors from the home of the Minster ladies, Reuben deemed it prudent to draw up. There was evidently a considerable throng in the road in front of the house, and that still others were on the lawn within the gates was obvious from the confused murmur which came therefrom. Some boys were blowing spasmodically on fish-horns, and rough jeers and loud boisterous talk rose and fell throughout the dimly visible assemblage. The air had become thick with large wet snowflakes.

Reuben sprang from the sleigh, and, stepping backward, vigorously shook old Gedney into a state of semi-wakefulness.

“Hold these lines,” he said, “and wait here for me.—Or,” he turned to Jessica with the sudden thought, “would you rather he drove you home?”

The girl had been in a half-insensible condition of mind and body. At the question she roused herself and shook her head. “No: let me stay here,” she said, wearily.

But when Reuben, squaring his broad shoulders and shaking himself to free his muscles after the long ride, had disappeared with an energetic stride in the direction of the crowd, Jessica forced herself to sit upright, and then to rise to her feet.

“You’d better put the blankets on the horses, if he doesn’t come back right off,” she said to the ’squire.

“Where are you going?” Gedney asked, still stupid with sleep.

“I’ll walk up and down,” she answered, clambering with difficulty out of the sleigh. “I’m tired of sitting still.”

Once on the sidewalk, she grew suddenly faint, and grasped a fence-picket for support. The hand which she instinctively raised to her heart touched the hard surface of the packet of papers, and the thought which this inspired put new courage into her veins.

With bowed head and a hurried, faltering step, she turned her back upon the Minster house and stole off into the snowy darkness.