It went up all at once—the old wood just reached its flash point, and a curtain of flame stretched across the whole length of the hearth and up to the ceiling. For a few seconds, every one of us was too stunned to do anything—we just stared.

Then Mrs. Campbell screamed, “The ceiling! Phyllis! There’s a bucket behind the bar—fill it and help me!”

She became suddenly modern and efficient, wielding a proper soda-acid fire extinguisher in both hands, fearlessly aiming it overhead and sending a jet into the flames licking at the oak beam over the bar. “Louisa, get Aunt Jane outside! Then come back and try to ring for the firemen at Windyedge! Get Jane a chair if you can—”

Phyllis ran to fill the bucket. I hauled Jane over my shoulder by her good arm.

I left her shivering against the stone wall out front, between the scorched pines on the ridge and the dancing orange light behind the deep windows of the Limehouse. I had time to dash in to make the Mayday call. But I didn’t have time to get a chair. Nan and Phyllis turned me out as I tried to step into the bar.

Jane wasn’t where I’d left her.

She lay on the gravel in front of the Limehouse. She’d tried to come back in by herself. What for—the records, her wonderful jazz collection and the Johanna von Arnim recordings—her faked British passport?

I think she came back for me.

It was much worse than her first fall. It was hard to tell what was wrong.

“Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh,” she moaned quietly, over and over.

“Louisa, run down to the Torries’ and get a blanket and some brandy,” said Mrs. Campbell. “We can’t move her without help.”

“Oh no!” I cried. “I left her alone a minute ago and look! I’m not going now—”

“I’ll go,” said Phyllis.

I knelt beside that wonderful old woman on the icy gravel with my arms around her, trying to keep her warm with my own warmth. The stones drove through my stockings into my knees like shards of frozen glass.

Couldn’t I have stopped this, this one thing?

But I’d had to ring for the firemen!

“They won’t arrest me now,” Jane whispered.

“Nobody’s going to arrest you! Ever!”

She clutched my sweater. “Louisa? Don’t go, my lovely Louisa.”

“I’m not going anywhere,” I said.