Father and son, after one despairing look at each other, darted down the stairs again, and had but just time to make their escape ere a great wave of flame came rolling along overhead, and the house itself was wrapped in the fiery mantle.
Dorcas, waiting with the men in the boat, devoured them with her eyes as they appeared, and uttered a little cry of horror and amazement when she saw them appear, choked and blackened, but alone.
"She would not come! she would not come! Oh, I feared it from the first; but it seemed so impossible! Oh, how could she stay there alone in that sea of fire! O my mistress! my mistress! my poor mistress! She was always kind to me." Neither father nor brother spoke as they got into the boat and pushed off into the glowing river.

It was terrible to think of that intrepid old woman facing her self-chosen and fiery doom alone up there upon the roof of that blazing house.
"She must have been mad!" sobbed Dorcas; and her father answered with grave solemnity: "Methinks that self-will, never checked, never guided, breeds in the mind a sort of madness.

Let us not judge her.

God is the Judge.
By this time, methinks, she will have passed from time to eternity." Dorcas shuddered and hid her face.

She could not grasp the thought that her redoubtable mistress was no more; but the weird sight of the fire, as seen from the river, drew her thoughts even from the contemplation of the tragedy just enacted.