But Tom only gazed with bleared eyes at the fire, and tried to stand up straight.
The little crowd of women about Helen had been silenced at first by the tumult and glare, but now broke into wild lamentations, and entreaties that Heaven would send the engine soon, wringing their hands, and sobbing, and frightening the children that clung about their skirts even more than the fire itself.
"How did it start ?" Helen said, turning to the woman next to her, who, shivering with excitement, held a baby in her arms, who gazed at the fire with wide, tranquil eyes, as though it had been gotten up for his entertainment.
"They say," answered the woman, tossing her head in the direction of Tom Davis,--"they say him and some other fellows was in 'mong the lumber this afternoon, drinkin', you know, and smokin'.

Most likely a match dropped, or ashes from their pipes.

Drunken men ain't reasonable about them things," she added, with the simplicity of experience.

"They don't stop to think they're burnin' up money, an' whiskey too; for Dobbs don't trust 'em, now the mill is shut down." "Yes," said another woman who stood by, "them men! what do they care?
You," she shouted, shaking her fist at Tom,--"you'll starve us all, will ye?
an' your poor wife, just up from her sick bed! I do' know as she'll be much worse off, though, when he is out of work," she added, turning to Helen--"fer every blessed copper he has goes to the saloon." "Yer man's as bad as me," Tom protested, stung by her taunts and the jeers of the cripple.
"An' who is it as leads him on ?" screamed the woman.

"An' if he does take a drop sometimes, it wasn't him as was in the lumber-yard this afternoon, a-settin' fire to the boards, an' burnin' up the food and comfort o' the whole town!" Tom hurled a torrent of profanity at the woman and the cripple collectively, and then stumbled towards the road with the crowd, for the fire was approaching the side of the yard where they stood, and beating them back into the village street.
The air was filled with the appalling roar and scream of the flames; showers of sparks were flung up against the black sky, as with a tremendous crash the inside of one of the piles would collapse; and still the engine did not come.
"Hurry! hurry!" the women shouted with hoarse, terrified voices, and some ran to the edge of the bluff and looked down at the river.
The men were hurrying; but as they drew the long-unused engine from its shed, an axle broke, and with stiff fingers they tried to mend it.