"On the whole, then," said his bride, "you ought to be reconciled for the loss of your twilight reflections."

"When I look into your eyes I am repaid for everything! There!" he turned to Helen, "could any one have said a perfect thing more perfectly?" And Miss Maitland agreed that, although his grammar might have been criticized, his sentiment and delivery were flawless.

"Well, it's over now, so I'm glad you accept it gracefully," she said. "You're committed, temporarily at least—unless you wish to start for Nevada at once."

"Really, Helen, I think it's most indelicate of you to refer to such a possibility," the other girl remarked. "I've only been married fifteen minutes, and to be deserted by one's husband even within a week or two is not considered flattering."

"No, I think I'll stay," Wilkinson replied. "But if I were to start West at all, I should say the sooner the better to avert the wrath of your esteemed but irascible parent."

"I think father has said all he has to say; he expressed himself most thoroughly," Isabel rejoined thoughtfully.

"I should say he did!" her husband agreed. "With elaborate precision, if I may so express it. He told me enough about my family and antecedents to make me wholly ashamed to belong to them. His presentation of myself was simply masterful; it would have moved one of his own trolley cars; I didn't wonder a bit that he objected to me as a son-in-law. In fact, I told him that had I known all these things I should have sought a fitting helpmate from the State Reformatory, but that I could not withdraw—my word was pledged."

"What did he say to that?" Helen asked, with amusement.

"He intimated that, as I seemed susceptible to reason, perhaps his daughter also might be. But I assured him that he failed to calculate correctly my undeniable personal charm—that I was an acquired taste, but one for which there was no cure."

"An odd one, but mine own?" suggested Isabel.

"That was not quite the idea I intended to convey, but I am bound to admit it was just about the way it seemed to strike your respected parent. That is, he said, 'I suppose if she's been idiotic enough to decide to marry you, it would be impossible to bring her to her senses now.' I cordially assented."

"Do you know, I believe I really am married," Isabel said reflectively; "for I certainly object most decidedly to my father's way of talking to you. Heavens! If I have to go through life resenting the things people say of my husband, I shall certainly lead a checkered career."

"It is the common lot of wives," remarked her husband philosophically. "But here we are, hard by the gilded food bazaar wherein a head waiter with drawn butterknife guards a table for three, reserved in my name. We are about fifteen minutes early, but personally I could look with resignation on the idea of nourishment."

"The voice of returning nature," said Helen, with a laugh. "Charlie married is the same man, in one respect at least, that we have always known. Isabel, you may be disturbed over what people say about your husband, but you will never need to be disturbed at his lack of appetite."

"The main disturbance will be in providing for it," Wilkinson responded. "The securities I own bring me in a revenue of thirty dollars a year. That is two dollars and a half a month, or about eight cents a day. I read only yesterday an article about some ingenious person who contrived to support life on something like that sum, but my recollection is that his menu consisted almost entirely of peanut butter—of which I am not particularly fond—and besides that, there was only one of him, while there are two of us."

"Yes, that's true," Miss Maitland conceded.

"I had begun to think I had gotten financially on my feet, when my father-in-law turned over that trolley insurance to me, but he says he'll see me considerably below the equator before he gives me the renewal of it. Deeply do I regret that I did not succeed in getting him to take out three-year policies."

"Why wouldn't he?"

"Well, he just wouldn't. And I was unwilling to force the matter for fear of losing entirely that coy and canny fish. I did get him, though, to let me rewrite the line last month, so as to include some property not at first insured, and that ties it up until next April. And maybe before next April comes around, the hard-hearted John M. will have relented toward his gifted son-in-law, and all will be well. Meanwhile we will live on our principal."

"Meanwhile we will do nothing of the sort," said Mrs. Wilkinson, with a smile. "I may not have inherited all father's talent for finance, Charlie, but there are one or two things I know enough not to do, and that is one of them."

"Madam," said her husband, sternly, "there is in your speech a hint of definite purpose which is at once encouraging and disquieting to me. May I ask if your plan contemplates the labor of your consort? Do I make myself clear? In other words, are you suggesting that I shall go to work?"

"It may come to that," smiled his wife.

"Well, well! Charles Wilkinson a wage earner!" He shook his head silently, and the trio walked on.

It had been arranged that Helen was to dine with them. The sudden marriage, which had been forced by a swift access of hostility on the part of John M. Hurd, had left little time for preparations, but the dinner was merry enough, and the health of the bride and groom was pledged with the utmost fidelity to tradition; and after that, Charles and Isabel escorted their guest home, and left her at the door of the apartment on Deerfield Street.

Mrs. Maitland found her daughter but silent company the rest of that evening, and at a comparatively early hour the Maitland apartment grew dark. In Mrs. Maitland's room all was quiet, and in due course, presumably, sleep; but Helen found that slumber was alien to her eyes. So, opening her window to the little breeze that came hinting of summer although speaking of spring, she looked out wide-eyed into the starry night.

It was warm, even for the time of year, and the cool breath of the ocean which Boston knows so well was not in the air. Instead the breeze moved slowly in from the westward, bringing the imagined odor of apple blossoms from unseen orchards. The city's sounds were dying to a mere rumor of sound. Now and again a light went out suddenly in some window of a near-by building; the reflection of the street lamps on the night became more and more clear. For a long time Helen gazed out into the darkness.

Across the water to the northward shone the lights on the Cambridge shore. Seeing them her memory went back to the time when first she had really seen New York by night. Smith had volunteered to show her the night city as it should be seen, and never was she to free her imagination from the sight. They had gone first to the South Ferry, in the gathering dusk, and taking boat for Brooklyn had witnessed from its rear deck the golden pageant of the thousand lighted buildings of the lower city—had watched them gleam in a thousand ripples across the dark river, ripples that lay and moved like silver and golden serpents along the water. Back presently they had turned, approaching once more the stately towers that touched the sky, and this time they had sought a new angle. Over to the Jersey shore their blunt-nosed ferryboat had taken them, and thence north along the river to Twenty-third Street, seeing the gold and velvet-black city slide southward as in a dream.

On all this Helen was now indefinitely reflecting, and of the man with whom she had seen it first she perhaps thought a little. But those were oblique thoughts, and hardly worth the name. All the experiences and impressions of the day—Isabel's departure from home, the wedding, the grave face of the old minister, the silence of the dim room in the parsonage, Charlie's subsequent comments, the dinner a trois—all these mingled in her mind, and somehow seemed a part of the great night into which she gazed.

Yet there was an undercurrent of vague dissatisfaction in her reflections. All these things were true and vital, and she had been only a spectator, a visitor at the fair. Life had surged around her, but had touched her not at all, or lightly at best. Unconsciously her thoughts toward the sleeping city were as though she offered herself to it and to the life that bound it and swept through its veins. Presently, across the water, a clock began to strike the hour—midnight—and softened by the distance, the chimes came gently across the intervening space.

Helen roused herself a moment: midnight! Yet the blood that flushed her cheeks showed that sleep for her was still afar off. And so she sat, unmoving, while in the darkness above her the myriad stars moved slowly in their majestic courses.



CHAPTER XIX

The bringing of order out of chaos is one of the most interesting and also one of the most satisfying employments a person can have. Likewise it is usually one of the most exhausting, if the chaos has been really chaos and the order be really order. But the satisfaction of seeing, as the clouds break and the skies clear, the salient outline of the thing appear as it ought to appear is sufficient compensation for all the effort. Even if the work be no more elevated than washing up a trayful of soiled china, a certain thrill is there at the successful completion of the task; and the greater the Augean stable, the purer is the pleasure of him who cleans it.

When in the spring of this, his most eventful year, Smith had taken charge of the slipping, wavering, demoralized Guardian, the stable of Augeas there confronting him would perhaps have dismayed a less enthusiastic and a less determined man. Everything was at loose ends; under the shiftless hand of Gunterson even the fine insurance machine built up by Mr. Wintermuth in his best constructive days had suddenly grown to creak painfully in its joints. The heads of departments, seeing no inspiring or even efficient leadership above them, had become discouraged, and there had been no one to brace their failing spirits. Mr. Cuyler and Mr. Bartels in particular had felt the altered fortunes of the company more keenly than they had felt any business crisis in all their previous experience.

When Mr. Cuyler had witnessed his local business, his pride and his life, the fixed star of his professional soul, begin slipping away, his gloom, as has been told, was not to be lifted. But the case of Mr. Bartels was even more sad. Year after year had that painstaking official made up the current statement of the company's position, to be presented in silence to Mr. Wintermuth on the first business day of every month. Year after year had he carried this balance sheet to his chief and stolidly waited for the word of satisfaction which was always forthcoming, save in exceptional cases. For there had come to be a kind of sacred formula about it, and if that formula failed to materialize, the world was all awry for Mr. Bartels, until another month put matters right once more. And this, so placidly prosperous had the Guardian been, the succeeding month had seldom failed to do.

"Holding our own, Otto?" the President would inquire.

"Poohty good; losses is bad but premiums is up some, too," Mr. Bartels would usually reply; and Mr. Wintermuth, appreciating the impossibility of ever reaching a loss ratio low enough to meet the approval of his Teutonic subordinate, would scan the statement with little fear of the result. And then, after another little exchange of courtesies, this monthly playlet would end.

When the Guardian had first met the rough water, Mr. Bartels had not been able to understand that anything was amiss—that anything could be amiss—with the company whose inconspicuous prosperity had been an axiom of the Street. When, on the first day of February, he had taken off his first summary of January results, a little cloud of puzzled suspicion had gathered in his still blue eyes. After carefully checking his own figures he had rung for Dunham, the chief accountant, and it had been a querulous and angry summons.

"Here, dese figures is all wrong. You have January premiums pretty near fifteen per cent behind last year. Fix 'em."

But Dunham, chill as the Matterhorn, assured the excited little man that the figures were quite correct and that he had checked them twice to make certain.

"But—but—" said Bartels in bewilderment, "we cannot be going backwards like that! We have never gone back like that in January."

"Until this year," incautiously rejoined the other.

"No; nor this year, neither!" cried Mr. Bartels; and only his own thrice repeated checking of the premium sheets would convince him. Shaking a puzzled and resentful head, he at last sought his chief; with a hang-dog air he handed over his statement, and with heavy heart he waited for the President to speak.

Speech was longer than usual in coming.

"Not quite so good?" the President said at last.

"No," said Mr. Bartels. "Rates must be off, I guess?"

"No, Otto," returned Mr. Wintermuth, slowly. "It's not a rate war. It is that we have had to give up some of our agencies in the East on account of the Conference separation rule. I am afraid we shall have to expect a certain decrease for a little while until things get readjusted. But it won't last; you needn't worry about that."

Unfortunately, however, it did last; and not only that, but it became more and more marked with each succeeding month. With the third statement, when the greatest inroads had been made into the Guardian's business, Mr. Bartels became like a living sepulcher. So heavy and sad was the heart he carried in his breast that not all the consoling words of his chief could stir him.

"I have seen agencies whose accounts I have passed for twenty years fall away to almost nothing or nothing at all. From Silas Osgood I get no March account; from Jones and Meers I get none. Every month for fifteen years have I written Jones and Meers to correct their adding; now I write them not at all." And there were many more.

Finally, when at last it dawned upon Mr. Bartels's Bavarian mind that the Guardian was really in peril and that unless something were done quickly, a large part of the remainder of the agents in the East would follow those already gone, his blind anger and resentment knew no bounds. He could not, however, understand the real facts in the case, and no one ever took the trouble fully to explain them to him. So his impotent rage, lacking a target whereat to aim it, became even blinder. He was like a child, being unjustly punished for some wrong which he had not committed, and which he could in no way comprehend. The thought of facing his chief with a semiannual statement made up of a series of months like these, was more than he could bear. Fortunately he was not to be called upon to do so, for Mr. Gunterson left the Guardian when the fat was all but in the fire, and another turn was given to affairs.

And the year now just closing had been a busy year for Mr. Richard Smith. During the most of it he had worked nearly twelve hours a day, and spent a liberal share of the balance in laying his plans. Now, and only now,—as the year 1913 was drawing to a close,—had he time to draw a full breath and look about him.

His Augean stable, if not wholly clean, was at least free from the more dangerous impurities. The Guardian was not yet, it was true, clear of all possibility of disaster; but the tide had been turned, and with strict care there was no further need to fear shipwreck. In Pennsylvania, in Maryland, in New York,—in short, practically everywhere save in Massachusetts, where the fight was still in the courts,—separation had received its deathblow, while robbed of this advantage the Conference companies could do little or nothing to harm the Guardian. And in justice to them it must be said that none of them apparently manifested any abnormal desire to do so, excepting always the Salamander, whose hostility increased in geometrical ratio with the Guardian's recovery of strength and prestige. Most of the agencies which had been lost under Mr. Gunterson's management were either restored to the company's lists, or else their places had been taken by others of equal or superior quality.

Out in the field the special agents had under Smith's aggressive direction recovered their courage and carried out with striking success the details of his campaign. At the few points where the company's loss record had been consistently bad, Smith either kept the Guardian out altogether or made an appointment on such a basis that the agent's profits would be small unless the company itself made money through that agency. Being free and not bound by Conference restrictions, he was able at many points to improve his company's position. And when, in the early days of the coming January, Mr. Bartels should approach his annual statement, it seemed probable that it would show little diminution in the Guardian's resources. The statement would be helped, too, by the fact that the value of some of the securities owned by the company, chiefly considerable blocks of bank and anthracite railroad stocks, had appreciated very handsomely during the year. And Mr. Cuyler, thanks to the increased conflagration line and to the large business he was securing from his new branch manager, was making a record so good that he could scarcely believe the figures which he himself had compiled.

All in all, the showing would be by no means a discreditable one. It had been a remarkable task; and Smith, now that he came to look back on it, remembering the black days of the reign of Gunterson the Unready, could himself only wonder mildly at the way all these things had come about. In the midst of the satisfaction which he could not help but feel, there was always a genuine sense of amazement at the facile way in which Fate had played into his hand. If he had any doubts, however, no one else confessed to any. Mr. Wintermuth frankly gave to his young underwriter the proper share of credit for the results that had been brought about. All this was pleasant, but it was also earned.

In these months of activity, activity unusual even for Smith, who was customarily a busy man, there had been for him only one personal diversion. This was his growing friendship with Helen Maitland; and to this relationship Smith had by this time come to turn as a lost Arab turns to a chance-discovered oasis. Through the days of Gunterson's administration he had not had heart to write Helen or even to think of her—to his darkened vision she seemed increasingly far away. But this could not last, and when the tide turned, he presently found himself writing to her almost as to another self, and found himself awaiting her letters as filling one of the most vital needs of his life. There was a name for this, but as yet he was not prepared to use it, and if Helen were prepared, certainly no hint of any such readiness showed through her diction.

Because men no longer go abroad, as in medieval times, hewing their way to glory and romance with sword and mace, it is no sure sign that the flower has fallen from romance's tree. Merely because that flower now blooms perhaps more quietly, less flamboyantly than it used to bloom in purple and gold, is no reason to think that it does not bloom at all. The singers of world songs find voice to-day, just as they always have, and no lack of all the panoply of old-time chivalry and war can make a friendship slipping into love less than a beautiful and wondrous thing. It is perhaps in some ways to be regretted that the inspiring bombast of the elder days is no longer in vogue—the grandiloquent arrogance that led a man to tie a lady's ribband to his arm and proclaim on fear of sudden death her puissance of beauty throughout the world. This is perhaps unfortunate; but through added reticence beauty really suffers no wrong.

Smith, although he had not as yet formulated his precise wishes or intentions as regards Helen, still knew that he desired a house professionally in order before he allowed himself to think of another kind of house. The Guardian was his company, and the Guardian must be placed in a haven where storms could come not, before he would feel that his charge was sufficiently relaxed to allow of his dreaming dreams.

It was with this idea that, as the old year was drawing to a close, he approached Mr. Wintermuth with a definite project in view.

"We are not going to have such a bad year, after all," he began.

"I fancy we shall come through pretty well," the President agreed. "Although it didn't look much like it at the start."

"No," said Smith; "it didn't. But do you know, sir, that in one way we're not making as much of a profit as we should?"

"In what way do you mean, Richard?" inquired his chief.

"Not in the underwriting," replied the younger man. "I'm not going to suggest increasing our lines or opening up any more than we have. But I don't think it would hurt us if we opened up a little financially."

"How so? In what way?"

"Well, our investments are in high-class securities, but they're not liquid enough. We've always bought with the intention of holding what we buy forever. Now, we've got an exceptionally good finance committee; Mr. Griswold in particular is regarded as one of the strongest and shrewdest men in Wall Street."

"Yes; I know he is," Mr. Wintermuth conceded.

"And there's really no good reason why we shouldn't benefit by his judgment. Now, you know as well as any one that the money to be made out of underwriting, pure and simple, is comparatively little. You know that in the long run, even with the most ably managed companies, expenses and losses together just about eat up all the premiums received—that less than a dozen first-class companies doing a national business have an underwriting balance on the right side for the last ten-year period."

"I admit that unfortunately such is the case."

"Therefore the only chance a company has to make money is from the use of money—from the use of its premiums between the time they are received and the time they are paid out in losses. And as this is really our only chance, we ought to take every advantage—and make as much of an investment profit as we possibly can."

"I trust you do not mean to suggest that we use the Guardian's assets for purposes of speculation," Mr. Wintermuth remarked.

"Certainly not—unless it is speculating to take advantage of what foresight and knowledge of conditions our finance committee possesses. I do not suggest buying on margin or selling what we haven't got. But I do suggest that we carry more liquid assets and a bigger cash balance than we have ever done, so as to be able to take advantage of opportunities that may present themselves. Now, take our Ninth National Bank stock, for instance. The Duane Trust Company crowd are trying to buy the control, and the stock's higher than it's ever been. In my opinion the block we hold is worth more to the Duane people than it is to us; I'd let them have it."

"Why, we've had that stock for twenty years!" the President said.

"Well, we've probably had it long enough," said his subordinate, with a smile. "At least I'd like to have Mr. Griswold's opinion on the point. And you certainly will never lose much by getting out of a security at the highest price it's touched in that entire period."

"Perhaps not. I will speak to Griswold about it," said Mr. Wintermuth.

"I am not a financier, and all this is somewhat outside my province," Smith went on; "but I think we ought to follow more closely the trend of modern business methods. We hold far more than we need of solid railroad bonds that net us four per cent on our investment. With very little extra risk I am sure we can secure a good deal larger return."

It was a rather daring speech to make, for four per cent first-mortgage railroad bonds had been Mr. Wintermuth's idea of finance for almost a generation. It spoke well for his confidence in his Vice-President that he did not regard the remark as an impertinence.

"That may be true, Richard," he said mildly, "although I have held to the contrary for twenty years. Still, times change, and to-day you may be right."

"I think I am, sir," returned Smith, respectfully. "At any rate, why shouldn't the question be laid before the directors?"

"We could do that," agreed Mr. Wintermuth, with, it must be confessed, a covert feeling of relief. After all, the assimilation of new ideas is not the most painless of processes, whatever the age of the assimilator.

"There's no meeting before the January one, is there?"

"No. January fifth—dividend meeting. But that's comparatively soon. I'll lay it before the board at that time."

"Thank you, sir," said his subordinate, rising; "and I think that at least one person present will approve a little more elastic financial policy for the Guardian."

"Mr. Richard Smith?" inquired the President.

"Oh, yes. But I was thinking of Mr. Griswold."

"Well, we shall see," rejoined Mr. Wintermuth; and the conversation concluded.

The year 1914 dawned clear and cold. There had been an almost daily snowfall in New York during Christmas week; and although the street cleaning squad had labored stoutly, a little dusky whiteness still persisted in the less frequented corners of the city. This had come near to being the undoing of Mr. Jenkins, the main reliance of the Pacific Coast accounts and otherwise of considerable importance in the period of stress and toil known as "statement time."

At the beginning of every year comes this period to every company—the time when the accounts department becomes, instead of an active thorn in the company's flesh, the real, essential hub of the whole wheel; the time when the adding machines are never still and the rooms resound with the rustle and stir of a thousand sheets of figures, swung ceaselessly over by practiced and hasty thumbs; when the lights burn late every night for two weeks on end, and the laboring bookkeepers see their families only by cinematographic glances between newspaper and coffee cup in the cold gray mornings.

This time was now come; and the Guardian's men, under the silent but none the less strenuous urging of Mr. Bartels, had begun the grind which could end only when the annual statement of the company was in the printers' hands with proof initialed and approved by Otto Bartels, Secretary. And this, taken in conjunction with the cold weather and heavy snowfall, had fairly undone the honor and the reputation of Mr. Jenkins. For the unusual cold and the night work together had betrayed him into potations even beyond his wont, the slippery pavements had proven very baffling to his dignified tread—and the snowy signet upon the back of his topcoat spoke to a delighted office all too plainly that at last the alcoholic equilibrist par excellence had fallen.

This, however, embarrassing as it was to the individual in question, did not seriously delay the work of the department, which was well under way by the time the directors came together in their private office, to declare the semiannual dividend which for many years the Guardian had undeviatingly paid. A trial balance, from gross figures, had been drawn off, so that the President was able to report with reasonable exactitude on the condition of the company. The dividend was promptly declared, and this was followed by a more or less informal discussion among the gentlemen around the big table.

"The increase in our surplus seems due mostly to the rise in value of some of our securities," Mr. Whitehill commented; "but the underwriting showing is much better for the last six months than for the first. I think our friend, Mr. Smith, is to be congratulated; and at the same time I want to ask what he thinks of our prospects for the coming year."

"Well, from the underwriting viewpoint," Smith answered, "there is no reason why this year should not be better than last, and several reasons why it should; but if you will pardon the presumption of my going outside of my own department, I think our chance for an increased profit lies more along financial than insurance lines."

"Mr. Smith thinks," said Mr. Wintermuth, "that there has not been a sufficient flexibility in our investments—that we could do better with a larger cash balance and more liquid—or easily liquidated—assets."

"And so we could," said Mr. Griswold. He leaned forward with more interest than he had yet shown. "I have felt for some time," he continued, "that our management of our resources was substantial and safe, but—without wishing to reflect on our President, whose conservatism has been a tower of strength to us—I have also felt we were financially just a little old-fashioned."

"What would you suggest that we do?" inquired the President. "My mind is entirely open on the subject."

"Let me see the statement," said Mr. Griswold. He regarded it carefully through his glasses. "Well," he said, "there are several items on this, representing securities of which I advised the purchase. This Schuylkill and Susquehanna Railroad and this Ninth National Bank."

"Ninth National—that's the bank the Duane crowd is trying to buy, isn't it?" asked another director.

"Yes. It's higher now than it has been for twenty years," said Mr. Wintermuth.

"And a great sight more than it's worth," Mr. Griswold commented. "If it were mine, I'd get out at the present price. And I'd get out of Schuylkill and Susquehanna, too. I don't want to be quoted on this, you understand, but there's no reason for its selling at 160 except the expectation of an extra dividend, and in my opinion all this talk of an extra dividend is just rubbish. I believe if we sold what we have to-morrow, we could get it back within six months, if we wanted, at 135."

The gentlemen around the table were visibly impressed, as Mr. Griswold's reputation for sagacity in such matters was more than metropolitan.

"Well, I move that the Finance Committee be empowered to recommend the sale of any of our securities," said another well-intentioned director. "And that on their recommendation the securities be sold," he added somewhat lamely.

"The Finance Committee doesn't need any such resolution passed," said Mr. Griswold, with a laugh. "If I'm not greatly mistaken, it's always had such powers. But I'm glad to learn that it is now the desire of the directorate that we should use them."

It was only a few days after this that Smith, having stopped on his way home to see a Pittsburgh man who always put up at the Waldorf, met Mr. Griswold in the lobby of that hotel.

"Well, our Ninth National stock is sold," remarked that gentleman, casually. "Four ninety-two."

"Good!" said the underwriter. "I think we're well out."

"So do I," returned the other. "By the way, did you notice the market to-day?"

"No."

"Closed weak. Schuylkill and Susquehanna off two points and a half."

"Too bad we didn't get out of that, too," said Smith. "I remember you said it was too high."

"It still is," returned the financier, dryly. "But we got out. We sold every share we had, at the opening, this morning."

Smith looked at him.

"You mean—?" he asked.

"I mean that a good big cash balance is often a handy thing to have. And just now I'd rather have cash than stocks. I don't mean there's going to be a panic, or anything like that, but everything's very high. They may go some higher, but they'll certainly go a good deal lower. And I don't think that we'll have to wait very long. Good-night—glad to have seen you."

"Good-night," replied Smith, thoughtfully.



CHAPTER XX

In the Deerfield Street apartment a young man stood waiting with perhaps less calm than was strictly Oriental. This could no doubt be attributed to the fact that he anticipated with distinct pleasure the coming of somebody, while a true Oriental never really anticipates anything—or if he does, the thought gives him no delight.

But Smith, as he sat in the straight-backed chair, felt very glad indeed that he was about to see the somebody for whom he was waiting. The time which had elapsed since his most recent trip to Boston had somehow gone with unconscionable slowness, and the medium of the mails had proved an alternative means of communication only measurably compensating. He had, in short, discovered that a great deal of his life was concerned with the girl whose footsteps were now to be heard advancing down the hall.

"I'm awfully glad to see you," said Miss Maitland.

"And I you," returned the visitor; and if the words carried only the conventionalities, each found a way to make them more significant.

"Mother will be in to welcome you," the girl continued. "It's a compliment she doesn't pay everyone," she added, with a smile. "She doesn't care, as a rule, for young gentlemen visitors. By the way, we have plenty of time, have we not, before we need to start?"

"Fully twenty minutes," he answered. "I guess I'm absurdly early, but I thought I ought to give the young lady an opportunity to get acquainted with me before starting out alone with me in a taxi."

"Are we ever acquainted with any one?" the girl parried; and a moment later the conversation shifted to meet the entrance of Mrs. Maitland.

Shortly before eight o'clock they set forth for the theater. It was the evening of the twenty-first of February, and the following day, Sunday, was also a holiday in memory of a great man. It was of him that they chanced to speak, almost on entering their conveyance.

"I'm glad to-morrow is a holiday," said Smith. "After a party on the previous night it is always soothing to think one isn't obliged to get up at any particular hour in the morning. But I don't suppose that point of view would appeal to you."

"No," said his companion, with a laugh. "I much prefer having something particular to get up for. But as I seldom have, I presume that's merely another way of saying that every one wants what one hasn't got. I fancy if I had to appear punctually at breakfast every morning, I'd appreciate holidays a great deal more than I do now."

"I used to think we had too many. That was because it tears things up so abominably in an insurance office to get two or three days' work slammed at you at once. But I'm reconciled now. And if we celebrate for any one, we certainly ought to do so for George."

"Seriously speaking, why?" Helen asked. "Probably I should be ashamed of myself, but I've never been able to get up as much enthusiasm for him as I feel I should. Can you tell me any way of doing so?"

"I can tell you how I came to, at all events," said her companion. "The story may not be so romantic, but it made more of a hit with me than the account of the same heroic gentleman nearly freezing to death at Valley Forge, or standing up in a boat while he crossed the Delaware, which is a silly thing to do, even for a hero. Nothing of that sort. But somewhere—I forget just where—I ran across the account of a little episode which showed me that the General was a man of real ability, after all."

"What was it?" asked the girl, with interest.

"Well, it seems that some earnest society of antiquaries had been digging up the back yards of Rhode Island and making idiots of themselves generally in an effort to prove that the Vikings came to America."

"But they did come, didn't they?" Helen interrupted.

"Of course they did; but it wasn't known in Washington's time. However, somebody with a vein of enterprise or malice had salted a Viking mine, so to speak, and under the auspices—and the pay—of the society had contrived to exhume a stone tablet on which were some extremely apropos inscriptions, proving exactly what the amiable old gentlemen desired to prove."

"About the Vikings?"

"Yes. Well, the discovery of this tablet made a deep impression. The society held meetings and passed resolutions and went through all kinds of ponderous and absurd conventionalities, culminating in asking General Washington—at that time I don't believe he was President—to make a speech. He came over from Boston, and they showed him the tablet. And after he had looked it carefully over, he casually called their attention to the fact that the inscription, which was supposed to have been cut in the eleventh century, contained script characters which appeared in no northern alphabet prior to the sixteen hundreds. And what is more, when they looked it up, they found that he was right."

"That is really very interesting," Helen said.

"It gave me a respect for him that I'd never had before, anyway," rejoined Smith. "Think of the old General knowing anything at all about Icelandic sagas—and the offhand way he picked out the anachronism and smashed it in the eye. No—so far as I am concerned, he is entitled to his holiday. Long may it wave—especially as I hope to see you, if you'll let me, while if it were an ordinary business day I should probably have to devote myself to certain distinguished legal gentlemen."

"How is the lawsuit progressing?" asked the girl.

Smith surveyed her doubtfully.

"Have you seen Mr. Osgood recently?" he inquired suspiciously. "One time, you remember, you made me tell a long story all of which you knew perfectly well before I began."

"No—honestly," Helen laughingly denied. "I have hardly seen Uncle Silas for two or three weeks, and the last time we met, he said nothing about it."

"Well, then, in confidence it is my hope and belief that unless our present expectations fall through with a sickening thud, another month or two will see the Guardian and your uncle back in the office that neither of them should ever have left."

"Not really!" said the girl, delighted.

"I have no longer any real doubt of it," Smith said seriously. "It can hardly fail now. I don't mind saying to you that it's about time, too. The Conference has made a good fight; but they were beaten from the start, and they know it now. And I'll be very glad to see some Boston business coming in to us again, I can assure you."

"Haven't you been getting any this last year?"

"Only a little, principally suburban business through a small agent named George Greenwood. Of course we got a lot through Sternberg, Bloom, and McCoy, but it was so bad that I canceled nearly every policy they wrote for us. All the Guardian has left in the down-town district is some building business—a few lines written by the Osgood office for three or five years, and which haven't expired yet. And there aren't many of them, for Cole switched some into the Salamander, and besides, we always tried to keep our congested district business on an annual basis. If Boston burned to-morrow, I don't believe the Guardian would lose more than a hundred thousand dollars."

"That sounds to me like quite a loss."

"So it is, but it's only a small fraction of what most companies have at risk here. I'm really not sure but that a year ago we didn't have more than we should. I certainly know a lot of companies that would sit up and take notice with a vengeance if a big fire ever did occur."

"Do you think one likely?" asked Helen. "It makes one shudder just a little to think of it."

"No—probably not. Still, there's really no reason why one shouldn't happen here as well as elsewhere. And big fires are certain to happen somewhere. The city's improving right along, but it's still got its possibilities."

"Yes," said the girl. "For now that I come to think of it, I remember that the conflagration hazard in the congested district is not a thing one can precisely calculate, but it would be difficult to overestimate its gravity. Isn't that so?"

Smith looked at her, turning in the taxi to do so. By the flash of a street lamp that they were passing he could see she was smiling whimsically.

"Where did you get that?" he demanded.

"Don't you recall?" she rejoined. "Whether it's greatly to his credit or not, I can't judge, but certainly he himself hath said it."

"That's true," her companion admitted, with a laugh. "I remember now. But how in the world did you happen to?"

"Should an humble apprentice—an ignorant pupil—forget the first pearl of wisdom that fell from the master's lips? It was the first speech of Mr. Richard Smith that I ever heard repeated—the first time I ever heard his name mentioned."

"If I'd had any idea it would have lived so long, I certainly would have tried to say something more eloquent," the other returned. "However, I still stand by the sentiment. And incidentally, I don't mind saying that if Boston is going to burn, I hope it does so inside of the next two or three months—before Mr. Osgood puts the Guardian back with a half a million dollars' liability scattered about down town."

"Don't talk of so terrible a possibility as the burning of Boston," said the girl. "There has been one very great fire here. Surely there will never be another."

"Surely not," agreed Smith. "At least for the sake of your fellow citizens and my fellow underwriters I cordially hope not. But here we are, apparently."

The taxi was coming to a stop across the street from the Aquitaine, and in front of the theater where already a crowd was congregating. The avenue between the theater itself and the Common was filled with cabs and motor cars moving spasmodically about under the autocracy of a large mounted policeman whose voice easily defied the whirring motors. In the raw northeast wind there was the unpleasant smell and oily smoke of burnt-out gasolene.

Smith and Helen, disembarking at the curb, managed to avoid the worst of the melee; and presently, when their coats were checked and out of the way, they reached their seats just as Christopher Sly began his opening speech. The prologue soon played itself through, and the house, now completely filled, burst audibly into speech, as though a long departed sense had been suddenly and miraculously restored. From all sides the swelling tide surged forth, and Helen listened for a moment before she herself spoke.

"You would certainly suppose that no one of them had been allowed to speak for the last five years, wouldn't you?" she asked.

"Oh, well," Smith answered, "perhaps every one of them has some one he's as glad to talk to as I am to you. Although, come to think of it, I hear several voices not possessed by my sex, and I don't know but that I would really rather listen to you."

"But you won't have the opportunity," the girl rejoined. "No, this is your party, and you must be as agreeable and entertaining as you possibly can. You may begin by telling me all about the actors to-night. Why does the star choose to play such a part as old Sly? It surely isn't the star part, is it?"

"It is the tradition—or years ago it used to be. Very few actors do it now; in fact, this is the first time I've seen the star play it for years. It's well done, too, and I haven't seen it well done since old George Clark had his last curtain. This man is a good man."

"He is indeed. I noticed in the Transcript he was English. Is she his wife? I gathered that she was."

"Yes. They've been playing together in London for several years now, and this is their first trip to America. I fancy that he is the real brains and ability of the combination, and her reputation seems mainly to rest on adding obedience and decorative embellishment to his effects. And she certainly is decorative, don't you think?"

"Yes—in a certain way. Tell me—do they always play Shakespeare? I was in London two years ago, but I don't recall hearing anything about them at that time. I should think I would if they'd been there."

"That's odd. I should surely have thought you'd have heard of them. They've been well known over there for some years. I suppose, though, they play the provinces, like every one else. No, they don't play Shakespeare all the time, by any means; they couldn't do it and live."

"You mean that they couldn't get audiences? Why, some actors do. Mantell, for instance—and Sothern and Marlowe. They seem to go on year after year, and they must be at least moderately successful, or they wouldn't keep it up."

"Mantell ought to; he is a real actor—of the traditional school, of course—but great, all the same. It has always seemed to me that his Lear was one of the fine performances of the stage to-day. But even Mantell has to travel halfway across the country every season; he couldn't stay in New York—no, nor in intellectual and appreciative Boston, either. And I doubt whether a man would fare much better trying to play nothing but Shakespeare in London. No, this man can play virtually anything; he made his first big hit—in recent years, that is—playing Maldonado in Pinero's 'Iris.'"

"But go back to Sothern and Marlowe. They go on Shakespearing, world without end."

"If you can call it Shakespeare. I have never been able to see much in their way of doing it. Marlowe does some things well, but I confess that to see her now as Juliet is too great a strain on me. As for Sothern, he's a good romantic actor, but not a Shakespearean one."

"They play this—-'The Taming of the Shrew'—do they not? It seems to me they were here last spring."

"Quite likely. I think they try. One wet and miserable night I went to see. But remembering, as I did, the immortal Katherine of Rehan and the hardly less magnificent Petruchio of Skinner, I never should have gone. There was only one redeeming feature."

"What was that?"

"When the scene comes, watch how this man carries Katherine off. That's one great test. See if he backs her up onto a bench; see if he guides her premeditated fall to the precise center of equilibrium of his shoulders; see if he staggers painfully off with his knees tottering, almost flapping beneath him. By heavens, I have seen Skinner abduct a one hundred and sixty pound Katherine with as little effort as if she had been a wicker basket full of eggshells!"

"Is this dramatic criticism?" asked Helen, maliciously.

"Perhaps not of the academic brand," admitted Smith, laughingly; "but I believe it's good sound criticism just the same. If a man is going to play the swashbuckler, I like to see him able to swash his buckle. But seriously, I shouldn't have objected to that one bad piece of business if it hadn't seemed to me that the whole performance was out of key and wrong. But here's the curtain going up."

The curtain rose on Signor Baptista's house, and for the next half hour farce comedy supreme held the audience in its grasp.

"Katherine is very good, don't you think?" queried Helen, when once more the inane wanderings of the orchestra began to compete with the conversation.

"Very good indeed; I like her rages."

"I have always been sorry that I never saw Ada Rehan; every one who ever saw her says just as you do that no one could equal her."

"I'm sure no one could. I have seen her sit with her hands in her lap and tears—genuine tears—streaming down her cheeks for very rage when Petruchio harries her in this act. Heavens! but she was in a fine fury! Do you know that the only objection I ever had to this play was that I grew sorry for Katherine—sorry to see her proud neck bent to any yoke, so to speak."

"She is made finally to like it, though."

"Yes; she is—in the play. But I never could more than half believe that she actually liked it, for all that. Oh, I've no doubt it's wrong to prefer ungoverned wrath to sane and controlled sobriety; but she was so magnificent in her savagery that it seemed a shame she had to be tamed at all. Like the lions and the other animals that they train to jump through hoops, you miss something, you know; some splendid essence has evaporated, and I for one am sorry to watch it go."

"They tell me," said the girl, demurely, "that under the proper conditions and auspices young ladies are secretly glad to be subjugated."

"I suppose they have it naturally—cradle of the race, and all that sort of thing. Just the same, I still continue to prefer Katherine in her first state."

"You speak of her as though she were an etching."

"She suggests one, in that gown she wore in the last act—or would, except for the color."

"From that rather supercilious remark I should gather that you do not admire colored etchings."

"Hybrid affairs, don't you think?"

But before this subject could be pursued, the play once more resumed the center of the stage.

It is the immortal prototype of farce comedy, this play of the "Taming of the Shrew." In the hands of a lesser author it would have lost its comedy and degenerated purely into farce, restricting itself to more ignoble aims and to a more indulgent public. For farce, after all, is farcical, and the mood for its appreciation is not one which is sympathetic to any great or moving thing. And in the hands of interpreters less than intelligently fine, the play may still descend into the lower class; but this cannot be done without degrading it beyond any likeness to its real self.

Played rightly, however, Petruchio becomes not a brawler, not a kind of damn-my-eyes bully and braggart, but a practical idealist, a man who, happening by chance upon a creature of stupendous undirected power, sets himself to the direction of that power toward nature's, if not humanity's, ends. At the first he cares nothing for Katherine save that the rumor of her fire and spirit has pleased his wild fancy. And never is there the faintest hint of the sentimentalist about him; his is never the softness of the lover, but rather the careful prudence of the utilitarian. Yet he unstintedly admires Katherine; this is somehow felt to be so by his rather pompous implication that he would hardly be taking all this trouble about the woman were she not the makings of a royal mate, fit even for his sky-wide vision and heart and humor.

Perhaps in Elizabethan days most of this was lost; possibly during the author's own life the play assumed rather the wild gayety and license of a farce, and all the comedy had to wait in abeyance for the years to bring it into its own. Undoubtedly very few, if any, of the auditors of Shakespeare's time felt the compunction to which Smith confessed when the pride of a proud woman was seen dragged at a man's chariot wheel. What the women of those days thought about it is not so certain, but probably it was pretty much what they think to-day. Certainly Helen's expressed view was in approximate accordance with the presumably unexpressed opinion of Elizabethan ladies; and to this, in the intermission before the last act, Smith called her attention.

"Do you realize that your belief that Katherine was pleased at being conquered is not at all modern?—it's absolutely medieval."

"Well, we are all medieval—quite largely—are we not?"

"Possibly—in spots. When the girl of to-day is not overpoweringly advanced, perhaps she is quite far behind. But I should hardly have expected so distinctly a medieval opinion from you."

"Heavens! why not? I sound horribly Bostonian. Am I so hopelessly advanced that you can credit me with no human sentiments at all?"

"Well, that," said Smith, "was scarcely my thought."

"It sounded very much like it. However, I'm glad if I were mistaken."

"You know very well," said her companion, in a lower voice, "what I think of you. I think—"

"Oh, but I don't—really," Helen quickly parried. This was getting hazardous; the conversation must be switched at once. "No matter what you think of me, you are almost sure to be quite mistaken. But some things I am willing to confess. And one of them, which may be very primitive, is this—that just because I myself am not a wild, tigress-like creature is no indication that I cannot realize how she would feel. Is it, now?"

Smith said nothing for a long moment.

"I'm very glad that you feel that way about it," he said at last, rather to himself, however, than to her. And for the rest of the intermission he hardly spoke.

It was by this time about half-past ten. Here and there in the house a vacated seat showed that some hopeless and inveterate commuter had felt the call of his homeward street car or train. Never in Boston can an entire audience remain to the close of an entertainment; the lure of the thronging, all-pervading suburb is too strong. Helen, idly watching the exodus of these prudent or sleepy citizens, heard outside what might have been the warning bell that called them forth. She directed Smith's attention to the coincidence.

"They have to go home, you know; and that sounds like the signal they obey."

"It sounds to me like a fire engine," said her companion.

But further speculation was cut short by the sight of "A Road," where presently was to be seen the old man who was so oddly mistook for a "young, budding virgin," and on which soon beat the doubtful rays of the "blessed sun"—or moon, as the case might be. The intermission between the last two scenes of the act was a brief one only—the mere moment required for the rising of a scene curtain upon the banquet hall of Katherine's father. But during that little interval, two things came to Smith's notice; the first being the sound of vague noises in the outside world, and the second the peculiar behavior of a man in evening clothes at the extreme side of the stage aperture.

The seats which the two occupied were in the lower rows of the parquet, close under the right-hand stage box; and from where they sat it was thus possible to look into the wings on the opposite side of the stage. It was in the little opening between the proscenium and the curtain that the man in evening dress unexpectedly appeared. His appearance caught Smith's eye, and he watched curiously to see what was to follow. In his hand this person held a watch at which he glanced hastily, and then made two steps to come before the footlights. But just as he was nearly clear of the scenes, some one out of sight in the wing evidently summoned him, for he stopped short, and then turned back. After a brief colloquy, in which the watch was again consulted, he retired, and a moment later the curtain went up.

It seemed to Smith, watching closely, his curiosity aroused by this half-seen and wholly uncomprehended episode, that the actors in the last act were playing under the pressure of an odd excitement, a sort of suppressed anxiety and haste. It seemed to him they hurried through their lines, and the messengers to the brides came back with an electric promptness more to be desired in real life than in the circumstances of the play.

Finally the whole was done—all except Katherine's final address to the ladies, and this took but a brief moment. Smith, listening tensely to sounds from without, turned and spoke to Helen; and as the curtain fell they started quickly up the aisle. Their seats chanced to be open to the side aisle of the house, and a moment later Smith was handing his check to the cloakroom attendant, with a "Hurry up, please"—and a lubricant to celerity.

The applause was still to be heard in the theater, but after one brief bow the actors appeared no more, and the house began to empty. By this time Smith had reclaimed the wraps, and he and Helen, ready for the open air, moved out through the lobby and onto the sidewalk in front of the theater.

On the sidewalk there was a curious tone of constrained excitement. Evidently something much out of the ordinary had happened—or was happening. People stood in groups, staring northward up Tremont Street; and almost all the passers-by, as though impelled by a nameless, inexplicable force that could not be controlled, were hurrying in the same direction. An ambulance with clattering gong dashed by. The urgent crowds, pouring out of the big theater, were pressing Smith and Helen toward the curb.

"Come on," said the New Yorker, "something's up; let's get out of this." He took the girl's arm, and they crossed Boylston Street and made their stand on the opposite, less crowded walk that edged the Common.

On the sidewalk about them knots of people were eagerly talking, all looking northward as though drawn by the same magnetic force. And as Smith and his companion raised their eyes, they saw in the northern sky an ugly crimson glare that seemed to widen and grow brighter even in the moment as they watched it. From far up Tremont Street, carried by the wind, came an odd murmur of confused noises, and nearer by the sharper sounds of clanging bells and the clatter of galloping horses' feet on the pavement. The crowds were hurrying up the walk, and out in the street, where it was less crowded, men were running in the same direction. The trolley cars seemed to have been blocked; none were coming from the north.

"Great Scott! That must be something terrific!" Smith said, and he felt the beat of his heart perceptibly quicken.

But before he had time to make any further remark, from directly behind them came with the electric unexpectedness of a sharp thunder clap one loud cry, compelling, exigent, almost barbaric.

"Fire!" it said. "Fire!"



CHAPTER XXI

In the eastern sky abode only the pale gold reflection of the city's lights. To the westward, across the Common, the soft blackness under the stars descended even to the treetops. But the attention of Smith and Helen, gazing north on Tremont Street, was fixed on the unsteady glow of threatening, reddish light thrown up against the absorbing fabric of the air.

"Good heavens! Just look at that!" Smith said, pointing.

"It must be a very bad fire—don't you think so?" inquired the girl.

"It looks from here like a corker. It's certainly bad enough to make it well worth seeing," he returned. "Do you want to telephone your mother that you're going?"

"Are we going, then?" asked Helen.

"To the fire?" demanded her companion. "Of course we are going. Fires are my business, besides being the greatest spectacles in the world. Let's go over to the Aquitaine, and we'll telephone."

A few minutes later they came out again; Smith motioned to the driver of a taxi.

"Get in," he said to Helen. "You shall ride to the fire like a lady, in a cab."

As he spoke he noted how the wind was blowing the girl's hair about her face, and for just an instant he gave that vision its individual due.

"Take us as near the fire as you can get," he directed the chauffeur.

From Boylston Street up Tremont to its intersection with Beacon is a ride of barely two minutes. It seemed as though almost no time had elapsed before the taxi came to a stop beside the Palmer House. The two occupants descended; Smith paid the man; the vehicle slid off into space beyond their ken. And at that very moment their eyes sprang to where, barely a block away, great tongues of red fire licked above a wide building's roof—and all else but that thing faded into nothing.

"This way," said the New Yorker, tersely. They crossed School Street, continuing up Tremont until they were opposite the old King's Chapel Burial Ground. From this point, over the top of the City Hall, they could see the flames riding high in air above a big five- and seven-story building.

"My God! That must be Black's Hotel!" said a voice in the crowd behind them.

"Sure, that's what it is," volunteered a policeman who was keeping the fire lines.

"Were any lives lost?" Smith asked.

"No. Every one got out all right. It didn't start in the hotel. They're very careful, and they have a fine fire drill, anyway. There was plenty of time to warn every one."

Out of the north came a crisp wind. Not content with blowing, as it had done before, Helen's hair about her ears, it also whipped her skirts urgently about her. Smith calculated this wind, and shook his head dubiously.

"Twenty-five miles an hour, I should think," he said. "Rather bad night for a big fire. I wonder if we can get a little closer."

From where they stood it seemed that the fire was in the heart of the block bounded by Court Square, Court, School, and Washington Streets. The north half of this block was occupied chiefly by Black's Hotel, one of the best-known hostelries in New England, and the south half by the newspaper plant of the Boston News and by several smaller buildings. Between the two sections of the block ran a narrow lane known as Williams Court; and at the time when Smith and Helen became spectators, the fire was pouring from every window of the big hotel and proving triumphant over all efforts to keep it from leaping the almost imperceptible southern barrier.

"How long has this been going?" Smith asked the policeman.

"About an hour and a half, I guess. I've been here since quarter to ten."

"Do you suppose we could go through the lines?" Smith inquired. "I've got a New York fire badge."

"All right for you, sir—I'll pass you on it—but not for the lady."

This did not admit of an argument.

"Now, aren't you sorry you brought me?" asked the girl.

"Well, no," said her companion. "Hardly—yet. Let's try a little strategy."

In front of them School Street was filled with wild turmoil. Here were hose carts and gray, snaky hose lines stretching along the pavement in weird, curves and spurting tiny streams from imperfect couplings; here were firemen rushing excitedly back and forth, hoarsely calling orders which no one seemed to hear. Along the curb were chemicals, hook and ladders, patrols, all of them now stripped of their apparatus; while at every corner beside a hydrant, each one chugging steadily away like the regular, vibrant pulse from some giant heart, were the fire engines. Out of their funnels poured a steady flare of cinders and smoke; on the pavement beneath them the embers lay crimson; and the scarlet flashes, whenever the fire doors were opened, showed the glowing furnaces within.

Retracing their steps toward Tremont Street, Smith and Helen skirted the Tremont Temple, then east along Bosworth until they came to Province Street. Up this narrow passage, which passes as such only by a courtesy peculiarly Bostonian, they went, finding themselves presently back almost where they had started, but at a point of vantage whence they could see the western face of the fire, which was now beginning to threaten hungrily westward toward the stout old stone walls of the City Hall.

And now the building of the Boston News, although protected by a system of automatic sprinklers, was thoroughly ablaze, as was the Miles Block immediately fronting City Hall Avenue. It was from this last building that the City Hall stood in jeopardy.

In Province Street, protected from the surge of activities beyond, the onlookers could watch most of the fight to save the old building. And a gallant fight it was, for the space between the fire and the coping of the old stone structure's eastern wall was a scant thirty feet. Fortunately, however, the wind was blowing almost directly from the north, and this gave the firemen a chance. From the movements of the department and the snatches of orders which could occasionally be heard, Smith gathered that a similar struggle was going on in at least three directions from the blazing block. To west, to south, and to east the flames were leaning, and the narrow streets made the task of holding them additionally hazardous.

Meanwhile the heat, even in Province Street, had become intense. Together with the other onlookers, Smith and Helen found it necessary to take refuge in the doorways and behind an angle of a building which projected slightly beyond the rest of the row, from which point they looked forth in turn, shading their faces and eyes with their hands. All at once, looking upward, they saw a cloud of smoke suddenly replace the glare directly north. The next moment a dull sound from the Miles Block was heard, and Smith saw its western cornice sway.

"We'd better get out of this, quick," he said. "A wall fell then—the west wall of that building there. That ought to save the City Hall, if they handle it right; but it'll make this alley too hot to hold us. Come on!"

Side by side the two hurried back with the crowd along the narrow way. Their departure was taken none too soon. Behind them they could feel a wave of heat radiated from the ruins of the burning structure; it forced its way even through the little street down which they were retreating, and they could feel the hot blast upon their backs.

"Something more must have fallen then," said Smith; but he did not turn his head. Instead he took the girl's arm with a firmer grip, and they continued swiftly on their way until they came safely into Bromfield Street and out of the pursuing wave of heat.

"Let's cross over to Washington," Smith said.

On Washington Street, at first, little could be distinguished, and the police were none too gently forcing the crowds even farther back. But a block to the north, at School Street, which only a moment before these two had just quitted, there was to be seen a wild confusion. Fire engines were here, too, chugging at every hydrant, and the passage was fairly clogged with hose and apparatus of all sorts, with nervous horses, and shouting, swearing, excited men. As Smith looked closer he saw that the firemen were no longer entering School Street to the west from Washington; they were being driven back instead. And a moment later he saw also a lieutenant raise his arm in a signal.

"There comes an ambulance," he said gravely,

"What is it? What do you suppose has happened?" Helen anxiously asked.

"Fireman hurt, undoubtedly. Unless I miss my guess, somebody was caught when that wall fell. That must have been what caused the wave that chased us down that alley. See!—they're bringing them out!"

Three times the stretcher moved back and forth across Washington Street. At last the ambulance drove away.

"All it could carry," commented Smith, grimly.

It was now evident that the department was being forced out of School Street. The wall which had fallen had entirely blocked the narrow passage, and the heat from the blazing ruin was so intense that no man could even obliquely face it. It was also clear that a hard struggle would be necessary to prevent the fire from leaping eastward across Washington Street.

Northward along the street from behind them, clanging its gong with insistence, came now a chief's wagon, its black horses plunging forward, open of nostril, reckless of all. Standing erect in his place, this man took an instant survey of the situation, and then began shouting orders to his subordinates in a way that seemed somehow to make itself felt above the uproar.

"He must have come around from the other side," said Smith. "Now he's taking charge in front."

However so, the effect of his instructions could be noted almost at once. Several of the engines withdrew into Milk Street; others moved northward along Washington; still others southward, but all away from the now threatened point, which was the southwest corner of Washington and School Streets. It was plain that all efforts were to be directed toward preventing the fire from jumping east of this, and it was with this purpose that the street was being cleared—the decks cleared for action. And well might they be, for on the eastern corners, directly across from this point of highest hazard, were two buildings, each an object of peculiar interest and even reverence to Bostonians. One of these was the Old South Church; the other the home of the Boston Transcript—palladia both.

"Clear the street—get those people out of the way," came the abrupt order, and Smith and Helen found themselves hastily retreating toward Tremont Street, where for a few moments at least they might hope to be undisturbed.

Not so. Tremont Street was now all that Washington had been a few minutes before; and with a tremendous crowd of onlookers the two found themselves steadily forced back and out into the Common. In the space before Tremont Temple the fire fighters seemed thick as bees, and from their manner Smith knew that they were dealing with a situation very close at hand.

"I bet anything that the Palmer House has caught," he said to Helen.

"You're dead right, Bill," called a voice in answer. "The whole School Street front's going. This is a fire, that's what it is—take it from me." The voice trailed off into the whirlpool of sounds, but Smith had heard all that he needed to know.

"This is more than a fire," he said gravely, his lips close to the girl's ear. "It is a conflagration. With a thirty-mile wind like this, blowing right into the heart of the city, no one can tell where it will stop. We had better go home."

"Go home! Why, what time is it?" asked his companion in surprise. "We've only just gotten here!"

"We have been here," said Smith, consulting his watch, "just about an hour and a half. It is now twenty minutes to one."

"Twenty minutes to one?" exclaimed Helen. "My mother will certainly think we're lost. But I hate to go. It is magnificent, even if it is terrible."

"Yes," said the other. "Just the same, Deerfield Street is the best place for you. I wonder if there's a cab in sight."

As it developed, there was none.

"Let us try the subway, then," the New Yorker went on. "Perhaps the cars are still running in there."

It was a silent couple that made its belated way home to Deerfield Street. Helen's eyes were bright with excitement and her face was flushed; but Smith was almost too preoccupied to notice the added brilliance which this gave to the girl's beauty. He parted from her at the door of the Maitlands' apartment.

"You had better go to sleep as soon as you can," he said. "Try to forget all about this business. To-morrow afternoon, when it's over, I'll come around, if I may, and tell you all I know about it."

"I shall be home to-morrow afternoon," the girl replied. "But what are you going to do now?"

"Oh, I expect I shall go back to the fire for a while," he said carelessly; "but I don't intend to stay up all night. Don't worry. I'll see you to-morrow about four—or earlier, if there's anything of importance to tell you. Good-night."

The door closed on him.

Meanwhile, furiously driven by the wind out of the north, the fire had taken a giant's dimensions for its own. Shortly after one o'clock the entire block between Tremont and Washington, School and Bromfield was one vast seething furnace from whose throat the fire burst now southward and upward with a roar. The wind was bringing its element of peril to add to the conflagration's own; it caught the white heat from the blazing mass of buildings and started it sweeping southward in a devastating wave of superheated fluid air.

As the man on the Common had said, this was a fire—but rather was it Fire, the essence of the god, the very burning breath of Loki. The city was in the hand of something greater than chance and more sinister than circumstance.

But the firemen did not realize this. When Smith found himself once more approaching the northern end of the Common, he could see that the fire had changed its humor. It was no longer a gambler, dicing with the fire fighters to determine whether it should live or die; it had taken on surety and become a tyrant, an absolute dictator, a juggernaut—and it would not pause now till all its grim play was played, or its humor changed, or some breath mightier than its own should quell it. But the firemen did not see this.

They were working like madmen now, facing a thousand hazards, unseeing yet noticing all, undirected save by words which they could hardly hear and even more hardly comprehend. There was not, however, even for their stout hearts, any longer the faintest hope of meeting their enemy face to face. The heated blast, borne on the wind's wings, entirely prevented that. All that the department could endeavor now to do was to restrict the conflagration's lateral spread, to keep the daemon in the track he had chosen, and not allow him to stray to east or west. But they reckoned without his whimsy.

There was a stray puff of wind to westward; there was a sudden cry of men mortally hurt, of horses suddenly tortured. Out from the windows of the Phipps Building a flood of flame sprang west; expelled from the tottering structure by some inward impulse, perhaps by an explosion of smothered air, this sheet of heat and flame, of unburned and burning gases, leaped Tremont Street as a rabbit leaps a ditch. Simultaneously the Tremont Street face of the old Park Street Church burst into flame, and along the rear of the buildings which fringed the ancient burial ground the fire crept. Under the eaves of these buildings it ran, and a moment later the line of brick structures on Park Street was briskly ablaze, and once more the fire fighters' flank had been turned.

Quickly this westward adventure proceeded. So unexpected had been this attack that it was some time before the department could adjust its front. Tremont Street, moreover, which was now untenable, held much apparatus, and most of this was burned where it stood. Straight up the slope toward Beacon Street and toward the gold dome of the State House the fire errantly went. Blank walls between buildings seemed to make little difference to it; what it could not pierce it ran around. Only at the extreme end of the burial ground did it pause. Here a seven-story fireproof building confronted it, and proved equal to the task. Against the solid walls of this barrier the impetuous visitor beat in vain, and then, just as suddenly as he had begun his foray, he subsided. The final sputter of his dying, under the hose streams of his foes, sounded for all the world like a chuckle. It was as if this wandering creature had signified that he had accomplished his purpose in giving the department a good scare, and that he might as well stop. The firemen stood for a moment to catch breath, gazing on the havoc wrought by this wild half hour; then, coiling up their hose, they went to await new orders.

It was now almost two o'clock. The fire had been burning for four hours; it had completely destroyed two entire city squares and part of a third, and its course was manifestly just begun. To the north and west it had strayed as far as it was to go, for the north wind made it impossible for it to spread farther in that direction, and its westward swing, as has just been seen, had been checked. The unrestrained main line of the conflagration was therefore almost due south, following the direction of the wind's impulsion, but also it tended toward the east, since all great fires strive, fanlike, to open out. This tendency on the west the Common effectually vitiated, and the firemen's plan of campaign was proportionately simplified.

The obvious course now to be pursued was to mass the opposing forces along the east flank of the conflagration, restricting so far as possible its spread in that direction, for since the wind made it impossible to face the fire, no hope lay in direct opposition save perhaps through the thunderous agency of dynamite. On these lines the defense set to work anew.

After a thrilling struggle Old South Church had been saved; the concentration of the fire fighters around its corner had been efficacious. The stout old structure which had survived so many years of winters out of the east had survived one peril more. Its brick walls stood with their paint cracked and split, its tower tottered, scorched and feeble, but the building itself was intact. Score one to Boston, and to the indomitable forces battling for her preservation.

Not without a fearful cost, however, had this victory been gained, for the east side of Washington Street, from the Transcript down, was now a flowing field of raging flame. Here there were no fireproofs to give momentary obstacles; one risk, it is true, had automatic sprinklers inside and out, but the water from these, while it lasted, only added steam to the confusion and fuel to the fire, while the great roof tank in its falling tore out the very heart of the stricken building. Hawley Street, farther on, was no barrier at all to a fire of such fury as this, and the unprotected windows at the rear of the Franklin Street row added their helpless nakedness to a situation in which nothing was a buckler.

Very orderly, irresistible without vagary, now became the fire's progress. Terrible in its absolute precision, in its measured advance down the wind, this implacable river of flame rolled down the city. Far ahead of the actual fire itself ran its fatal forerunner, the sheet of gases and superheated air, sometimes level, sometimes high lifted at the whim of the breeze, but always fierce, always southward, always with annihilation in its grip. There was no staying this deadly force and no facing it; farther than any hose stream could reach sped this outrider in advance of the devastating thing whose messenger it was.

Men from the United States Navy Yard at Charlestown were dynamiting buildings along Summer Street now, in the hope of gaining a respite by reducing the amount of fuel in the path of the main advance. The air was heavy with smoke, with the odor of charred embers and burning wood and merchandise, and the shock of the dynamiting added new heaviness to an almost unbreathable element. So acrid had the atmosphere become that the men in the front ranks of the struggle were compelled to breathe through rags and handkerchiefs soaked in water. Many men dropped where they stood, to be dragged back by their comrades and revived by the ambulance surgeons.

Franklin Street proved no more of a southern barrier than had the others before it. On the corner of Hawley Street stood an eight-story fireproof, sprinklered building, filled principally with crockery. Upon this the conflagration advanced as relentlessly as fate. Long before the flames themselves had reached it, the windows broke under the heat of the advancing gases, and little fires began to appear on the upper floors. Soon all the windows were alight, and this building too shook beneath the force which there was no escaping. Its frame, to be sure, stood bravely up, and after the fire was still to be seen, almost intact, a tribute to its maker and design; but its contents, alas, were not fireproof, and proved pabulum most welcome to the element which welcomed almost all things.

The firemen along the eastern fringe had been laboring with desperation. It was the seventh hour of steady battle, and many of them were almost overcome by exhaustion; but those who faltered found their places taken by others, and the unequal struggle went on. At this point Smith, with his fire-line badge pinned to his coat in case of challenge, was turning his hand to anything which seemed to need the doing. A solid wall of fireproofs along Arch Street had held the fire from spreading eastward there, but as Franklin Street was passed in the southward sweep, the eastward urging was not wholly to be denied. At five o'clock in the morning the four faces of Winthrop Square were all involved, and the buildings along Devonshire Street had begun to yield. Over at Washington and Tremont Streets the fire had now spread as far south as Bedford—and the wind was still blowing steadily.

Gradually, for the last half hour, the velvet blackness of the upper sky had been fading; gradually the sparks, as they mounted unceasingly, had begun to seem less luminous; and the waves of smoke which had been rising all night into the upper air became for the first time a little dark against the sky. All night had this smoke been flung up from the burning city, and always had it seemed white or reddish or dirty brown, as it rose; all night had the air hung close in its smoky pall, seeming to shut in the sad theater wherein this drama was being played; all night had the fire been torch and lantern and moon and stars to those who faced the fire.

Now, dimly across the eastern sky, was spread the first faint hint of a wondering dawn. Far out over the harbor a lightening could be seen, a prescience of day, and a ghostly half light, like that in a dim cathedral, replaced the flame-lit darkness. There were mists above the water, and the light gained progress slowly; still, it gained, and presently the salt sea odors came rolling in from the bay. The water turned from black to silver-gray, the shadows faded silently into nothingness, the hush that precedes daybreak seemed trying to steal into the tortured air. And men's eyes, turning from the flame and smoke and crashing walls, gave hopeless welcome to the Day.



CHAPTER XXII

The morning broke upon a sight almost beyond imagination. Through the darkness none had been able or had cared to see the city save in fragmentary glimpses, caught by the fierce light that flared and fell. Now, in the gray dawn, the city as a whole appeared beneath a smoky cowl, looking mightier and more austere than ever under the shadow of this dreadful visitation. All sectional sights aforetime had been of single streets, of squares, of stray purlieus—but now appeared the wide, sweeping stretch of the myriad roofs, the sturdy strength of brick and steel, the compelling magnitude and silent, massive power of the whole.

In the north, where all was safe, the sky was fairly clear; but where the fire took its way the smoke haze hung grim and close. From the east the scene was a striking one. Along the water front of Fort Point Channel were the buildings gray and red; down Summer Street, which lay like a canyon between walls of brick and stone, white steam and smoke rode in a seething mist, lighted at odd times and places by keen flashes of crude red fire; over the roofs wavered more steam and smoke, floating in some places like level banners which flapped in the wind, while in others it seemed to wrap itself in dirty folds about some skeleton of what had yesterday been a building. At various points, and suggested by the premonitory roar of dynamite, rose black, sinister columns of the densest smoke mingled with the dust of shattered buildings, like the pictured outburst of some volcanic crater; and through and behind and implicitly within all this the Fire moved upon its way.

It was about half-past seven in the morning when it was seen that all efforts to check the flames at Summer Street had failed. Along the north side of that thoroughfare lay the tumbled ruins of the dynamited buildings, destroyed in a hopeless hope, for the remedy had been too homeopathic and the disease too swift. Indeed, it almost seemed as though the razing of these structures had merely made more easy the progress of that river of unconsumed gases and air which the steady wind drove undeviatingly forward upon the windows and the roofs which the conflagration had not yet reached. It was very much as though this flood of invisible heat and destruction contained the sharp-shooters before an army's van; it was like the cavalcade that rode before a Roman Emperor's triumph two thousand years ago; like the flight of arrows which preceded the thunderous charge of English heavy soldiery on Continental battle grounds.

In the little triangle between three streets just west of Dewey Square stood a solidly built, compact group of five- and six-story structures, one of them of fire-proof construction. This triangle, by a vagary, now proved to be a crucial point. If this could be saved, probably so also could the whole block to the south of Summer Street; but if it could not, then that block too was doomed, and there was grave danger beside lest the district east of Federal Street be also involved. So on this precious spot the combined forces of defense concentrated. In Fort Point Channel four fireboats gave their powerful pumps to aid the engines; the firemen, hanging close to their work, sent stream after stream of water against the attacking flame.

It was in vain. After the most desperate endeavors, this little group went to join the rest, the only fruit of victory being that Federal Street found itself the eastern barrier, the fire north of Summer Street having been checked at that point. Small triumph that! for the buildings west of Dewey Square were now thoroughly ablaze—and the South Station was in danger.

In the open space known as Dewey Square, which is really nothing but the momentary widening of Atlantic Avenue at its intersection with Summer, the elevated railroad has its tracks. These, raised some twenty feet above the street, extend north and south along the western face of the South Station; there is a station at Essex Street, with stairways leading into the great depot itself. It was this elevated structure which now proved to be the compelling menace.

Suddenly, in what manner it could not be said, there was seen to be a serpent of flame swiftly stealing along the Elevated's track. A tiny frill of fire, under a feathery cloud of smoke, ran down the wooden ties; sharp crackling sounds were heard; and a moment later the frame roof of the raised depot burst into light. One would hardly have thought that there was here sufficient fuel to jeopardize greatly the stout stone walls of the South Station itself; even to the firemen, skilled in such matters, risking their heads to drench those walls with water from a dozen lines of hose, the hazard, while grave, seemed far from hopeless. But this was not a day of reason nor of precedents. As the clock in the great facade showed five minutes before nine, the western eaves of the South Station caught.

In this building, which is one of the busiest of the world's terminals, was little inflammable material save that which was movable. The structure was built almost entirely of brick and stone and steel. Much of the steel work, to be sure, was not so protected as to render it fireproof; yet in the building there would ordinarily have been scant fuel for an ordinary fire. But this was not an ordinary fire. Along the western side of the structure, where were baggage rooms, offices, and the like, this irreverent intruder found congenial occupation. In not more than twenty minutes this entire side of the Station was ablaze, and the flames had begun to eat their way upward to the vast iron roof of the train shed, which hung in a tremendous arch some eighty feet above the base of rail. Stretching north and south down the full length of this mighty shed stood at the summit of the arch a raised lantern, or texas. Supporting the weight of this roof, wide spans of steel branched, curving upward from the walls at east and west—and it was one of these walls whose integrity was now so bitterly beset.

A great fire makes its own fuel; it finds food where no food seems to be; stone walls crumble like sugar before it; it devours iron like dry wood, and plays wild pranks with steel. To its grisly power and its reckless humor the Station was now to bear witness.

The west wall had begun to crumble, and cracked and spalled by the intense heat, not alone of the direct fire, but also by radiation from the burning risks to westward, the stone was giving way. Down part of its length, where the cross walls came, it stood stoutly; but elsewhere it began gradually to weaken. Here and there a doorway broke into what might have been a solid section; in one or two cases arches crumbled; in many others inside walls or beams or stairways, falling, carried down with them another modicum of the long wall's resistive power.

Atlantic Avenue near the station was now untenable, and the fire fighters were divided. Part of them were north, but most of them were south of this latest scene in the play. The disaster here had done more than any other single occurrence in the progress of the conflagration to demoralize the department and spread dismay in its ranks. It may have been the fact that this great building had been held to be safe beyond a doubt; it may have been merely that these men had for nearly twelve hours been achieving and repeating the impossible, the heroic, and that this last blow had been more than they could bear. Their faces were gray beneath the smoke and grime, their eyes stung and smarted almost unendurably from the heat and smoke and their long vigil; and now for the first time since this whirling maelstrom had engulfed them, they were finding the opportunity to realize that human endurance is not supernal.

There was another reason why they realized this now, and that was that the bitterness of this last defeat had, for the moment, broken their hearts. So long as they had fought with a gambler's chance, with the barest hope of success, it was easy to forget they were hungry, were weary unto death, were human at all. But under the numbing stroke of this last setback, they suddenly felt all these things.

The most heart-breaking thing, perhaps, in human experience is impotence in the face of trying need. A man can stand well enough the ordinary vicissitudes of life; but to be confronted with an exigency that finds and leaves him utterly helpless is enough to crush the bravest spirit. The Irish soldiery that four times tried to scale Marye's Heights, which were not for scaling by any mortal men, felt this bitterness, and the mere memory of them preserves the image for the world. It is this same feeling that makes the injured football player cry like a child after he is recalled to the sidelines, and that makes a man in the grip of an undertow give up and sink. It is because they are called upon to combat forces against which their mightiest muscular efforts are as futile as the flirting of a fan in jeweled fingers.

Nowhere is this more terribly felt than by men facing a great fire; for here not only have they to deal with a power out of all proportion to humanity, but they confront a power perverse, saturnine, malignant, diabolic. A conflagration is wantonly cruel; not content with the simple panoply of its might, it summons to its aid the evil whims of an enraged elephant. It plays, like a kitten, with hope before it crushes and kills it. The spectacle of a building soaked and saturated in water from the nozzles of a score of hose lines, with the flames driven back from it by the sustained heroisms of a hundred men—and then the spectacle of that building leaping suddenly into light in not one but a dozen places—this is a thing no man can endure, if many times repeated, and this is what these men had been enduring for ten hours. They had done all that men could do—more than men could do—and it was not enough. At that moment all they wanted in the world was the privilege of lying down, never to rise.

Long hours before, shortly after midnight, when it had become certain that help would be needed, the wires had carried to the nearby cities Boston's appeal for aid. As far as Portland and Worcester and Providence the call had then gone forth; and later on the urgent word had been flashed to Springfield, Hartford, New Haven, Bridgeport, and New York. The New England cities had loyally responded; their engines and their men were even now scattered along the battle line and doing brave service. But these weary men by the South Station had not seen them; they found it almost impossible to believe that they were not alone and without aid in this titanic but hopeless task. Help might have come, their aching brains reflected—but not to them. For them there had been no help in sea or sky. Gathered together in the yards below the station, they silently watched it burn.

Of a sudden there came a lurch, a swift sagging of the arch supports at the western face of the arches; the roof quivered a little, then was still. It could now, from the open end, be seen that the supports in several places were wrenched loose from the wall; the steel spans hung free in air, while white smoke lifted unceasingly toward the summit of the vast shed. On the tracks the cars were burning briskly. Presently it could also be seen that the south end of the roof was bending of its own weight. It bent first just a little—then more. Then for a long moment it hung motionless, or with but the faintest quiver of vibration. Then, out of the sightless cavern came the screeching sound of metal scraping upon metal—a wild sound, like the torture of some inarticulate thing; a dull, grinding noise followed, and at last, out of the steaming furnace which the lower part of the train shed was now become, came the dull roar of some great weight falling.

With a crack like that of a gigantic express rifle the western end of the great roof arches pitched down to earth; weakened at the angle, loosened from their laterals, the big roof spans lurched heavily downward. A thrill seemed to run through the whole structure; the roof, strained now to an impossible angle, hung breathless above the abyss. Then slowly, almost in majesty, but with a sound like the crashing fall of a giant tree, the great arch tottered and fell.

On the tracks beneath the shed the cars which there had been no time to remove continued to burn cheerfully, in no wise dismayed by this terrible descent. And far out in the yards, blocked by a mass of salvaged rolling stock, stood a panting Mogul locomotive which had traveled the last fifty miles in something less than fifty minutes, and behind it lay the special train of the New York City Fire Department.

Were it not for the preponderance of the trivial in the affairs of life, all women and nearly all men would believe in Fate. This is borne out by the evidence of great men, who are fatalists one and all—or who were so until these modern, ultrapsychologic days in which overthinking is held to be so dangerously near a vice. Those persons now whose ears are close laid to the breathing of the world all believe in Fate. Not negatively, not foolishly, not in the manner which sets forth that what will be, will be, and any opposing effort is therefore futile; but in the way of the true philosopher, of the man who can look upon the ruin or the loss of all that he held dear, and realize that what is to him a tragedy must, in some light cruelly hidden from him, be conserving some higher, some more inscrutable end.

This is the better fatalism; and the closer one approaches the primitive realities, the nearer this kind of fatalism he comes. Looking on the naked face of life or the crude fact of death, it is obvious to all save the most frivolous that these things were meant to be so. As the Aryan saying has it, looking forward there are a dozen ways, looking backward on the way each man has traveled, there is but one. Crude tragedy carries with it its own conviction of predestination. It would be absurd to suggest that Togral Beg killed thirteen million people by accident or by an extraordinary succession of chances. Admit there is such an element as chance, and between it and Fate is room for a thousand doubts. It is natural enough for men who deal with the tiny, circling ball of a roulette wheel or with the turn of playing cards to deny any power higher than chance; but how of Napoleon, dicing for empires without end?—and how of Columbus, sailing indomitably westward into the wheel of the sun?—how of Shan Tung, surveying the rotting corpses of seven times seven cities of Chinamen slain by the Tartar sword?—and how of Boston, on this February morning, looking white-faced on its own ruin, a ruin which, furthermore, seemed scarcely begun? Whether Fate be Fate or not, Boston believed in it that day.

Only one thing now tended to lift the gloom from the outlook, and this was the fact that the fire seemed to have spread as far from east to west as it was possible for it to do. The Common on the west, and on the east side the Fort Point Channel, held its destructive sweep apparently safe. To be sure, there was just the possibility that where the Common ended, the corner of Tremont and Boylston might be turned and the flames swing west once more; but this, in view of the lower heights of buildings and the fact that the wind had now shifted and was blowing toward the east rather than the west of south, seemed unlikely. Moreover, the combined departments of Charlestown, Cambridge, Lynn, and a dozen other places were massed along Tremont Street to prevent this very thing. It was, however, a significant commentary on the hopelessness of the situation when men could find comfort in the reflection that a strip of city a half mile wide was alone exposed to the direct path of destruction.

Smith had been in the lower yards of the South Station at the time the train shed fell; he had waited only a short time after that, working for a hot quarter hour to save some of the cars not yet exposed to the shed fire. The method adopted was one suggested by a lieutenant of militia from Braintree; his plan, since no locomotives were for the moment available, was to fix bayonets, stick them in the woodwork of the car sides, and then, forty men pushing at once, the car would be rolled out of danger. Dozens of passenger coaches were saved in this way. When the bulk of the close work here was done, the New Yorker turned westward, taking care to keep well south of the burning zone.

"How far south on Tremont has it got?" he asked a passing stranger on Kneeland Street.

"About to the end of the Common," the man replied, without slackening his pace.

"By Jove! the Aquitaine'll be going next," reflected Smith. "I might as well retrieve my suitcase. It's the only one I own."

On his way back to the fire from Deerfield Street, the night before, he had stopped at the hotel, changed his evening clothes for a business suit, and left his suitcase in his room. It had not occurred to him that the fire might spread as far as that. Now, his interest quickened by a touch of amused fear lest he might already be too late, he turned toward the hotel with faster tread.