Fortunately her light had survived
the gusty attack and she was able to help her husband to his prop.
"What is it?" she cried breathlessly, "Is the house falling? Did you
ever hear such a noise!"
Mr. Schuler never had. The outcry upstairs was increased by the
shrieks of Sheila who had slept until the last shock and who woke at
last to add her penetrating voice to the pandemonium.
"Do you smell something queer?" asked Mrs. Schuler. "Do you think that
was a lightning-bolt and it set the house on fire?"
Her husband shook his head doubtfully. "The lightning has gone by," he
said, but they went together on a tour of investigation.
Nothing was burning in the kitchen, but the rays of the uplifted candle
showed a zigzag crack on the wall behind the stove.
"That wall is the chimney," said Mrs. Schuler. "Something has happened
to the chimney."
"Let's go into the dining-room and see if anything shows there."
Into the dining-room they went. An acrid smell filled the room, and as
they entered a smouldering flame in the fireplace burst into a blaze,
from the draught of the door. Its fuel consisted only of some trash
that had been tossed into the fireplace and hidden behind the fresh
pine boughs that filled the opening through the summer.
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