On seeing the smoke, both she and Esther were
for the moment utterly paralyzed with fear. What they so dreaded had at
last come to pass. The house was evidently on fire, and that fire set by
a devilish ghost. What was to be done? Olive was the first to recover
from the shock. Seizing the bucket of drinking water, always kept
standing on the kitchen table, she rushed down the cellar stairs, and
was horrified at the sight which burst upon her view. There in the far
corner of the cellar was a barrel of shavings blazing almost to the
floor above. In the meantime Esther had reached the cellar, and stood
looking at the crackling flames in blank astonishment. The water Olive
had poured into the barrel was not enough to quench the flames, for in
the excitement of the moment she had spilled more than half of it on her
way down. What was to be done? The house would catch and probably be
burned to the ground, and they would be rendered homeless.
"Oh! if Dan were at home, he could put it out," Olive managed to
articulate, for both she and Esther were nearly suffocated with the
dense black smoke with which the cellar was filled, and now the barrel
itself had caught.
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