‘Darling, splendid fool!’ cried Mary. ‘Fool worth all the wise ones among us!’ ‘He that loseth his life for My sake shall find it!’ said a pious Methodist cobbler with a patched boot under his arm. In the eternity of waiting that was numbered really but in seconds, a burly policeman beckoned four men and gave them a big old-fashioned counterpane that some one had offered, telling them to stand ready for whatever might happen. ‘Come closer, boys,’ said one of them, wetting his hat in a tub of water; ‘if we take a little scorchin’ doin’ this now, we may git it cooler in the next world!’ ‘Amen! Trust the Lord!’ said the cobbler; and just then Marm Lisa appeared at one of the top windows with a child in her arms. No one else could have recognised Atlantic in the smoke, but Rhoda and Mary knew the round cropped head and the familiar blue gingham apron. Lisa stood in the empty window-frame, a trembling figure on a background of flame. Her post was not at the moment in absolute danger. There was hope yet, though to the onlookers there seemed none. ‘Throw him!’ ‘Drop him!’ ‘Le’ go of him!’ shouted the crowd. ‘Hold your jaws, and let me do the talking!’ roared the policeman. ‘Stop your noise, if you don’t want two dead children on your consciences! Keep back, you brutes, keep back o’ the rope, or I’ll club you!’ It was not so much the officer’s threats as simple, honest awe that caused a sudden hush to fall. There were whisperings, sighs, tears, murmurings, but all so subdued that it seemed like silence in the midst of the fierce crackling of the flames. ‘Drop him! We’ll ketch him in the quilt!’ called the policeman, standing as near as he dared. Lisa looked shudderingly at the desperate means of salvation so far below, and, turning her face away as much as she could, unclasped her arms despairingly, and Atlantic came swooping down from their shelter, down, down into the counterpane; stunned, stifled, choked by smoke, but uninjured, as Lisa knew by the cheers that greeted his safe descent. A tongue of fire curled round the corner of the building and ran up to the roof towards another that was licking its way along the top of the window. ‘Jump now yourself!’ called the policeman, while two more men silently joined the four holding the corners of the quilt. Every eye was fixed on the motionless figure of Marm Lisa, who had drawn her shawl over her head, as if just conscious of nearer heat. The wind changed, and blew the smoke away from her figure. The men on the roof stopped work, not caring for the moment whether they saved the tenement house or not, since a human life was hanging in the balance. The intoxicated woman threw a beer-bottle into the street, and her son ran up from the crowd and locked her safely in her kitchen at the back of the house.