As the last line of the chorus floated through the open windows, an alarm of fire sounded, followed by a jangle of bells and a rumble of patrol wagons. On going to the west window, Edith saw a blaze of red light against the sky, far in the distance, in the direction of Lone Mountain. Soon after, almost on the heels of the first, came another alarm with its attendant clangings, its cries of ‘Fire!’ its chatterings and conjectures, its rushing of small boys in all directions, its tread of hurrying policemen, its hasty flinging up of windows and grouping of heads therein. The girls were too busy labelling the children’s gifts to listen attentively to the confused clamour in the streets,—fires were common enough in a city built of wood; but when, half an hour after the first and second alarms, a third sounded, they concluded it must be a conflagration, and Rhoda, dropping her nuts and cornucopias, ran to the corner for news. She was back again almost immediately, excited and breathless. ‘Oh, Mary!’ she exclaimed, her hand on her panting side, ‘unless they are mistaken, it is three separate fires: one, a livery-stable and carriage-house out towards Lone Mountain; another fearful one on Telegraph Hill—a whole block of houses, and they haven’t had enough help there because of the Lone Mountain fire; now there’s a third alarm, and they say it’s at the corner of Sixth and Dutch streets. If it is, we have a tenement house next door; isn’t that clothing-place on the corner? Yes, I know it is; make haste! Edith and Helen will watch the Christmas things.’ Mary did not need to be told to hasten. She had her hat in her hand and was on the sidewalk before Rhoda had fairly finished her sentence. They hurried through the streets, guided by the cloud of smoke that gushed from the top of a building in the near distance. Almost everybody was running in the opposite direction, attracted by the Telegraph Hill fire that flamed vermilion and gold against the grey sky, looking from its elevation like a mammoth bonfire, or like a hundred sunsets massed in one lurid pile of colour. ‘Is it the Golden Gate tenement house?’ they asked of the neighbourhood locksmith, who was walking rapidly towards them.