"Keep back now, keep back. We don't want no women here," cried a man, pushing her away, without looking at her. They were working stoutly at something, she didn't know what. The crowd were being pushed back. The smoke was suffocating, the ground uncertain; ladders and furniture seemed under her feet at every step. She could not speak, she did not recognize the man who pushed her back, nor could she, through the smoke, see any face clearly enough to know it. She heard a good many oaths, and knew that the crowd were very much in the way, and that the men at work were swearing at those who hindered them. Still she struggled to get nearer. Every moment she seemed to grow weaker, and every moment the horror of failing to get to her mother, seemed to grow stronger. At last she saw what they were trying to do, to get a rope stretched round the house, to keep back the crowd, perhaps from danger, perhaps from plunder. She heard above the noise, Mr. Andrews' voice in command; the crowd seemed to obey him. A line was stretched across the lawn, some thirty feet from the house, and the idle people were pressed back behind it. Missy by a desperate effort writhed through the crowd, and caught at the rope, and held by that, though pushed and swayed up and down, and almost crushed between her taller and more powerful neighbors. Mr. Andrews, passing along inside the cleared space, was calling out some orders to the men. He passed within a foot or two of where she stood, and she found voice enough to call to him and make him hear. "Where are you?" he said, hurriedly, coming towards her through the darkness. "Let me come to where you are," she gasped, stretching out one hand to him, but keeping the other fast closed over the rope. "Let Miss Rothermel pass there; fall back, won't you, quick." They obeyed him, falling back, and in a moment Missy stood free inside the rope, holding desperately to the hand Mr. Andrews had stretched out to her. "Mamma--" she said, brokenly, "tell me if she is hurt." "She is safe--all right--I took her, at the first alarm, to my house. You'd better get to her as quickly as you can. Come with me, I will get you through the crowd; it is less on this side of the house." He hurried her forward; she stumbled and nearly fell over a roll of carpet, and seemed to be walking over an expanse of books and table-covers and candlesticks. "Don't worry about any of these things," he said, "they'll all be safe, now the crowd are all behind the rope." "I don't worry about anything," she said, "but mamma." "You can be easy about her; there, I can't be spared here, I think you can get on now. Tell her the fire is all out, and there is nothing to worry about. I will see to everything. Ho, there, let Miss Rothermel through, will you?"