Meanwhile the crowd looked for Phil's reappearance on the beam from which poor Ned Crashington had fallen, but Phil knew the house better than Ned. He gained the upper floor by a back stair, which was not quite impassable; seized Martha in his arms, just as she was about to leap into the street, and dragged her back into the smoke and flames. It appeared almost certain that both must have perished; but in a few seconds the man was seen to descend the lower stair with the woman in his arms, and in another moment a wild enthusiastic cheer burst from the vast multitude as he leaped into the street. Laying Martha gently down on a doorstep, Sparks bent over her, and whispered in her ear. She appeared to have swooned, but opened her eyes, and gazed earnestly in the face of her deliverer. "The Lord must have sent you to save me, Phil; He will save _you_ also, if you will trust Him." "Forgive me, Martha, I was hard on you, but--" "God bless you, Phil--" "Clear the way there," cried a commanding voice; "here, doctor, this way." The crowd opened. A medical man came forward and examined Martha, and pronounced her to be only slightly injured. Several men then raised her and carried her towards a neighbouring house. Phil Sparks was about to follow, but the quiet man with the broad shoulders touched him gently on the arm, and said that he was "wanted." "Sorry to interrupt you in such a good work, but it can't be helped. Other people can take care of her now, you know; come along." Sparks' first impulse was to knock the quiet man down and fly, but he felt a restraining power on his other arm, and, looking round, observed a tall policeman at his side. As if by magic, another tall policeman appeared in front of him, and a third behind him. He suddenly bent down his head and suffered himself to be led away. Seeing this, the Bloater and Little Jim wrenched themselves from the grasp of their respective captors, dived between the legs of the bystanders, as eels might do among sedges, and vanished, to their own inexpressible delight and the total discomfiture of the "bobbies." They met a few minutes later at a well-known rendezvous. "I wish 'e 'adn't bin took," said the Bloater with a look of regret on his expressive though dirty countenance. "Poor Martha!" said Little Jim, almost crying as he thought of her. "'Ow much d'you think 'e'll get, Bloater?" "Twenty years at least; p'r'aps go for life; you see it's an aggrawated case. I've bin makin' partikler inquiries, and I finds 'e's bin raisin' no end o' fires doorin' the last six months--kep' the Red Brigade trottin' about quite in a surprisin' way. I rather fear that 'e'll be let in for ever an' a day."