My heart was gripped as if by an icy hand for I knew how inflammable the whole building was, and without stopping to put on coat or slippers, I ran swiftly down the stairs. As I entered the sitting-room so silent, so peaceful, so undisturbed, it seemed that my alarm was only a part of a dream till the sobbing of my daughters and my wife's voice at the telephone calling for help, convinced me of the frightful reality. I heard, too, the ominous crackling of flames in the kitchen. Pushing open the swinging door I confronted a wall of smoke. One-half of the floor was already consumed, and along the linoleum a sharply-defined line of fire told that it rose from burning oil--and yet I could not quite believe it, even then. It was like a scene in a motion picture play. My first thought was to check, to hold back the flames, till help came. The garden hose was lying out under a tree (I had put it there the day before) and with desperate haste I hurried to attach it to the water pipes. I saw father in the yard, but he uttered no word. We were each thinking the same thought--"_The old homestead is doomed. Our life here is ended._" The hose was heavy and sanely perverse, and it seemed an age before I had the water turned on. Catching up the nozzle I approached the kitchen door. The thin stream had no effect, and the heat was so intense I could not face it. Throwing down the hose I reentered the house. The children, hysterical with fright, were just leaving by the east door and Zulime was upstairs. Opening the front door I stepped out upon the porch to call for help. The beauty of the morning, its stillness, its serenity, its odorous opulence, struck upon my senses with a kind of ironic benignancy, as if to say, "Why agonize over so small a thing?" I shouted "Fire!" and my voice went ringing far up the street. I cried out again, a third time, a fourth, but no one answered, no one appeared, and behind me the crackling roar of the flames increased. In despair I turned back into the sitting-room. It had been arranged between Zulime and myself that in case of fire (once the children were safe), she was to secure the silverware and her jewelry whilst I flew to collect my manuscripts. With this thought in my mind, and believing that I had but a few minutes in which to work, I ran up the stairs to my study and began gathering such of my manuscripts as had no duplicates. As I thought of the hundreds of letters from my literary friends, of the many family records, of the innumerable notes, pictures, keepsakes, souvenirs and mementoes which had been assembling there for a quarter of a century, I became confused, indecisive. It was so hard to choose. At last I caught up a sheaf of unpublished stories which filled one drawer, and beating off the screen of the north window threw the manuscripts out upon the grass.