“_You_ run!” cried John, hoarsely, turning to the policeman, “or you--five pounds to the man who gets there first! Signs!--Good God! the wretches are out. We must break open the door.” And he beat at it, as if he would beat it in, with a kind of frenzy; while Huntley stood stupefied, and saw two or three of the bystanders, who had already begun to collect, start off with a rush to get the fire-engines. “There’s nobody in the house either, sir, or else I can’t make ’em hear,” said the policeman, coming up to John for his orders. “Then we must break in,” cried John. “There’s a locksmith in the next street: you fly and fetch him, my good fellow. And where shall we get some ladders? There is a way of getting in from the house if we were once in the house.” “Not to make too bold, sir,” said the policeman, “I’d like to know afore breaking into folks' houses, if you had any title to do the like. You’re not Mr Crediton, and he aint got no son----” John drew himself to his full height, and even then in his excitement glanced at Huntley, who kept by his side, irresolute and ignorant, not knowing what to do. “I am closely connected with Mr Crediton,” he said; “nobody can have a better right to look after his affairs; and he is away from home. Get us ladders, and don’t let us stand parleying here.” The policeman looked at him for a moment, and then moved leisurely across the street to seek the ladders, while in the mean time the two young men stood in front of the blind house with all its shuttered windows, and the closed door which echoed hollow to John’s assault. The dark front so jealously bolted and barred, all dangers without shut out, and the fiery traitor within ravaging at its leisure, drove John wild, excited as he was to begin with. “Good heavens! to think we must stand here,” he said, ringing once more, but this time so violently that he broke the useless bell. They heard it echo shrilly through the silent place in the darkness. “Mr White the porter’s gone out for a walk--I seed him,” said a boy; “there aint no one there.” “But I see no signs of fire,” cried Fred. Just then there came silently through the night air a something which contradicted him to his face--a puff of smoke from somewhere, nobody could tell where; and all at once through the freshness of the autumn night the smell of fire suddenly breathed round them. Fred uttered one sharp exclamation, and then stood still, confounded. As for John, he gave a spring at the lower window and caught the iron bar and swung himself up. But the bar resisted his efforts, and there was nothing for it but to wait. When the ladders were at last visible, moving across the gloom, he rushed at them, without taking time to think, and snatching one out of the slow hands of the indifferent bearers, placed it against the wall of the house, while Fred stood observing, and was up almost at the sill of an unshuttered window on the upper floor before Huntley could say a word.