Before them lay the great Tallwoods mansion house.

It stood before them a pillar of fire, prophetic, it might be repeated, of a vast and cleansing catastrophe soon to come to that state and this nation; a catastrophe which alone could lay the specter in our nation's house.
They were in time to see the last of the disaster, but too late to offer remedy.

By the time the coach had pulled up at the head of the gravel way, before the yet more rapid horsemen had flung themselves from their saddles, the end easily was to be guessed.
The house had been fired in a half score places.

At the rear, even now, the long streaks of flame were reaching up to the cornice, casting all the front portion of the house, and the lawn which lay before it, into deep shadow.

The shrubbery and trees thus outlined showed black and grim.
The men of the Tallwoods party dashed here and there among the covering of trees back of the house.