At that instant, a thunderous noise—like the roar of a thousand demons—smote upon our ears. Swivelling our heads in the direction of the fearsome sound, we saw the blazing roof collapse inward with an earsplitting crash. An enormous geyser of smoke and flame and fiery cinders erupted into the sky—a fierce blast of scorching air blew the massive front door from its hinges—the ramparts toppled—the very earth beneath our bodies trembled—and the stately and venerable house of Asher was no more!

Part Two

CHAPTER 13

With the tedious particulars of our journey homeward, the reader need not be concerned. Suffice it to say that, when the sun finally ascended over the smoldering ruins of the once-proud house of Asher, Crockett: and I—having remained seated on the ground with our backs propped against the tree—rose stiffly to our feet and commenced what promised to be an exceedingly arduous trek in the direction of the city.

We had proceeded only a short distance, however, when the fickle goddess Fortuna—who had, until that moment, appeared to revel in our discomfiture—unexpectedly took sympathy for our plight. Rounding a bend, the frontiersman and I were overjoyed to spy our horses grazing contentedly on a gentle, grassy slope. Had I not felt fatigued to the point of near-paralysis, I might have broken into a rapturous dance of celebration at the mere sight of the beasts. Mounting our steeds, we promptly reined them in a southerly direction and headed towards the city at a gentle walk.

So benumbed was I by exhaustion that I passed the entirety of our journey in a condition akin to that of the chronic somnambulist. I recall only the jouncing motion of my steed—the beneficent warmth of the day—and the droning voice of the irrepressible frontiersman, who (in spite of his own utter lack of sleep) poured forth a more-or-less continuous soliloquy, of whose content I remained, in my stupefied state, mercifully oblivious.

My next memories are of arriving, after a seemingly interminable period, at the doorway of my domicile on Howard Street—of dismounting from my steed and staggering through the front door—of the distressed exclamations of my dearest Muddy and Sissy as they led me to my chamber and helped me to bed.

Then all was silence—and stillness—and the blessed darkness of oblivion.

I slept like the dead. But for all their profundity, my slumbers offered me little, if any, relief from the agonies I had endured during my recent misadventure. My dreams were of the most dismaying, the most harrowing variety, in which a pale and wraithlike figure pursued me through the labyrinthine passageways of a gloomy, Gothic manse, while—faintly visible in the background—a slender, dark-haired female with indistinct features floated ghostlike through the shadows.