At this stage, and while all but one wing of the house was enveloped in flame and smoke, Styr the Anglo-Saxon, having accidentally learned that some catastrophe had occurred, joined his son in the darkness, and he did not come a moment too soon. Scarcely had Wolf, in hurried accents, explained what had happened, when shouts and screams of agony reached their ears, and, listening to ascertain the direction from which the cries came, they, by the lurid light which the fire threw around, descried, at the casement of an upper chamber in the wing still unscathed, faces of men and women in mortal terror of the most terrible of deaths. Styr guessed all: the inhabitants of Oakmede had fled to the hiding-hole to escape the hands of the foreign soldiery, and, ignorant that the house was on fire, had remained in concealment till the flames had seized the stairs, and their means of escape had been cut off. Their position was now truly awful; and the old man shuddered at the sight.
Nevertheless, Styr’s presence of mind did not desert him. He remembered that in the orchard was a ladder, and he hoped that it might be long enough to enable them to descend. Thither, as if he had suddenly shaken off twenty years of his age, he rushed, Wolf, in keeping pace with him, much marvelling at his father’s swiftness of foot. But when the ladder was brought, and when, to the joy of those who were imperilled, it was placed against the wall, their joy was suddenly turned into sorrow, and a simultaneous cry of despair rose from their lips as they perceived that it was too short to serve the purpose of saving them.
But Styr did not despair: it was not his way in life. Calmly he ascended the ladder step by step, till he was almost on the highest, while Wolf held it below to keep it steady. And much had the domestics to rejoice that the veteran’s stature was tall, and his shoulder strong. One by one he caught them in his iron arms--first the women, then the men--and descended with them on his shoulders, and all this he did calmly and in solemn silence, like a man who felt his responsibility, and was determined to acquit himself of it with credit. But when the last of the domestics was saved--and by that time the moon had risen--he turned round and gazed on them with the air of a person who wishes to ask a question, but dreads to receive the answer.