In the end we beat this in, and an aperture was made. Through that we dragged some thirty men and carried them quickly to the farm. Poor fellows, they were terribly burned, and their flesh fell from their bones as we lifted them. What lay beyond in that holocaust I did not dare to inquire. The barn was now but a roaring furnace; the cries had ceased; the moaning of the fire and the night wind alone remained.
I have told you that we laid our stricken comrades in the farmhouse and there did what we could for them. So great was their need that the immediate necessity of relieving it put everything else into the shade, and it was not until we had dressed their wounds and done our best to make them comfortable that I so much as remembered the woman Petrovka. Perhaps I should not have thought of her even then but for the fact that a sudden clamour discovered her in the room, and, turning about, I witnessed a violent altercation between her and one of the sick, who raised himself up from the mattress where they had laid him, and cried out that she had fired the barn.
"The she-devil!" he yelled in his frenzy. "I saw her do it, comrades; I swear she was the woman!"
Such an accusation naturally arrested the attention of everyone in the room. Léon himself had gone out again with others to prevent the fire from spreading to the neighbouring buildings, and there was no one there but myself who knew anything of Petrovka. The effect of the accusation upon the sick and the hale was almost magical. They did not ask for the man's proof, nor seek to question him, but, seizing the girl by the arm, they would have struck her down there and then had I not intervened.
"Come, come," said I; "we must do nothing in haste," for though I had been willing enough an hour ago to have acted upon an impulse, the heat of passion had passed and a sense of justice prevailed.
If this girl had indeed fired the barn, I would not lift a hand to save her; but we had only the chasseur's word for it, and he was already far gone in delirium. So it seemed to me that we owed her at least the formality of a trial, and, rushing in before those who held her, I commanded them to hear me.
"Gentlemen," said I, "this woman is a Russian and well born. It is difficult to believe that she would have done so foul a thing. If she be guilty she must pay the penalty, but let us hear her first. You will all admit the justice of that. Let her be tried and put to the proof, but do not do anything of which you may repent to-morrow."