As Dennis entered the utter darkness, a confused roar smote his ear that might have appalled the stoutest heart, but he was now oblivious to everything save Christine’s danger. With set teeth he put his shoulder against the living mass and pushed with the strongest till he emerged into the glare of the north side. Here, escaping somewhat from the throng, he made his way rapidly to the Ludolph mansion, which to his joy he found was still considerably to the windward of the fire. But he saw that from the southwest another line of flame was bearing down upon it. The front door was locked, and the house utterly dark. He rang the bell furiously, but there was no response. He walked around under the window and shouted, but the place remained as dark and silent as a tomb. He pounded on the door, but its massive thickness scarcely admitted of a reverberation. “They must have escaped,” he said; “but merciful heaven! there must be no uncertainty in this case. What shall I do?” The windows of the lower story were all strongly guarded and hopeless, but one opening on the balcony of Christine’s studio seemed practicable, if it could be reached. A half-grown elm swayed its graceful branches over the balcony, and Dennis knew the tough and fibrous nature of this tree. In the New England woods of his early home he had learned to climb for nuts like a squirrel, and so with no great difficulty he mounted the trunk and dropped from an overhanging branch to the point he sought. The window was down at the top, but the lower sash was fastened. He could see the catch by the light of the fire. He broke the pane of glass nearest it, hoping that the crash might awaken Christine, if she were still there. But, after the clatter died away, there was no sound. He then noisily raised the sash and stepped in.... There was no time for sentiment. He called loudly: “Miss Ludolph, awake! awake! for your life!” There was no answer. “She must be gone,” he said. The front room, facing toward the west, he knew to be her sleeping-apartment. Going through the passage, he knocked loudly, and called again; but in the silence that followed he heard his own watch tick, and his heart beat. He pushed the door open with the feeling of one profaning a shrine, and looked timidly in.... She lay with her face toward him. Her hair of gold, unconfined, streamed over the pillow; one fair, round arm, from which her night-robe had slipped back, was clasped around her head, and a flickering ray of light, finding access at the window, played upon her face and neck with the strangest and most weird effect. So deep was her slumber that she seemed dead, and Dennis, in his overwrought state, thought she was. For a moment his heart stood still, and his tongue was paralyzed. A distant explosion aroused him. Approaching softly he said, in an awed whisper (he seemed powerless to speak louder), “Miss Ludolph!――Christine!”