Mrs.Whitelaw slept a tranquil dreamless sleep to-night, while Mrs.Tadman snored with a healthy regularity in a room on the opposite side of the passage.
There was a faint glimmer of dawn in the sky, a cold wet dawn, when Ellen was awakened suddenly by a sound that bewildered and alarmed her.

It was almost like the report of a pistol, she thought, as she sprang out of bed, pale and trembling.

It was not a pistol shot, however, only a handful of gravel thrown sharply against her window.
"Stephen," she cried, half awake and very much, frightened, "what was that ?" But, to her surprise, she found that her husband was not in the room.
While she sat on the edge of her bed hurrying some of her clothes on, half mechanically, and wondering what that startling sound could have been, a sudden glow of red light shone in at her window, and at the same moment her senses, which had been only half awakened before, told her that there was an atmosphere of smoke in the room.
She rushed to the door, forgetting that to open it was perhaps to admit death, and flung it open.

Yes, the passage was full of smoke, and there was a strange crackling sound below.
There could be little doubt as to what had happened--the house was on fire.

She remembered how repeatedly Mrs.Tadman had declared that Stephen would inevitably set the place on fire some night or other, and how little weight she had attached to the dismal prophecy.