Rising with a groan to my feet, I made my way in the direction of the sound until, in the unholy crimson glow of the fire, I spotted the frontiersman. Moving as dose to the house as the scorching heat would allow, he was circumambulating the premises, hands cupped to his mouth, calling out the name of Asher’s sister in the evident hope of finding her still alive. Even at a glance, however, I could determine that his efforts were futile. By now, the once-stately manse was little more than an enormous furnace. Billowing clouds of smoke poured through every ruptured window; tall flames shot upward from the roof and danced along the ramparts. It was inconceivable that anyone trapped within those blistering walls could yet be alive.

Hurrying up beside the frontiersman, I laid one hand upon his shoulder. “It is no use, Colonel Crockett,” said I in a voice loud enough to be heard above the noise of the conflagration. “Unless, like ourselves, the mistress of the house has somehow managed to escape, we must forgo the hope of saving her.”

Crockett turned to me with a look of weary resignation. “I reckon you are right, Poe,” he sighed, dropping his hands to his sides. “C’mon!”

With the frontiersman in the lead, we bent our steps to the front of the house, where we discovered—not entirely to our surprise—that our horses, in their instinctive terror of the flames, had managed to tear their reins free of the hitching post and were nowhere in sight. By that point, the extreme, the unprecedented strains of that seemingly endless night of misery and peril had begun to exact their inevitable toll. Overcome with both physical and mental exhaustion, I sank to the ground beneath a towering tree, resting my back upon the gnarled trunk. Crockett—whose exertions had, at the very least, equalled my own—lowered himself beside me. For several moments we sat side by side in utter silence, transfixed by the scene of cataclysmic destruction taking place before our eyes.

At length, I turned my head toward my companion and asked: “In heaven’s name, what happened, Colonel Crockett?”

He opened his mouth to reply but was seized by a paroxysm of coughing. Finally, he shook his head and replied: “Blamed if I know. After you went to roost, me ’n’ Asher headed back to the kitchen and commenced to palaverin’ some more. We was hittin’ his jug at a tolerable pace, too. After a spell, ol’ Asher said he’d best go see how his sister was farin’. I was feelin’ a mite drowsy by then, so I put my head down on my arms and figgered I’d get me a little shut-eye ’til Asher came back. Next thing I know, I’m wide awake and the whole damn house is burnin’ like a canebrake afire.”