With the added help smoke soon ceased. It remained to investigate the cause of the fire, which was not obvious, to make sure that the rest of the house was safe, and undo as far as possible the injury of the water, which, spreading itself on the attic floor, had poured into the bedrooms below.
While the negroes were carrying out the parcels of printed matter, wet and charred, Durgan moved about in all the recesses of the house, examining the walls, lifting wet furniture on to the sunny veranda roof, and otherwise helping to modify the unaccustomed disorder.
While thus engaged, he realized how strongly had grown upon him a fancy that these lonely women might be harboring some insane person, whose escape and violence they might justly dread. He must now smile at himself for thinking that any source of terror lurked here in visible shape. As he followed Miss Smith from one simple room to another, creeping under the very eaves of the roof and feeling the temperature of every wall and shelf, he certainly assured himself that neither the skeleton nor its closet was of material sort.
He was struck with the orderly and cheerful arrangement of the house, with the self-control, speed, and good sense the sisters had displayed; but most of all was he surprised that the excitement and effort had unnerved them so little. When the hour for relaxation came, they appeared neither talkative nor moody; they neither shed tears nor were unusually cheerful. In his married life he had had some experience of women's nerves. This calm, practical way of taking a narrow escape from great loss roused his admiration.
Many bundles of papers were too much damaged to be worth keeping. Durgan had a use for these in a stove his laborers used, and, after Miss Smith had looked them over, they were carted down to the mine. Durgan sorted them, storing some old magazines and more solid papers for future use.
He soon found the covers of an old book, tied together over a collection of parchment envelopes. These in turn contained newspaper clippings still legible. Each envelope had its contents marked outside; they were the reports of a number of criminal trials, extending over a number of years, cut from American, English, and other European papers. Durgan was at once convinced that neither of the sisters could have been interested in the collection, and, assuming it to be the work of some dead relative, he reflected for the first time how rarely they spoke of family ties. It was true that Bertha would sometimes say: "My dear father would have enjoyed this view--would have liked this flower," or "Dear papa would have said this or that." He remembered how her voice would soften over these sacred memories, and remembered, too, how they always came to her among the beauties of nature, never in domestic surroundings. Such a father would scarcely have been so much interested in annals of crime.