Yes, it was the Brands' flat. The outer door and little entrance hall had been wiped out, and she was inside it. This evidently had been the drawing-room. Here were signs as of some frightful conflict, as if the room had resisted its fate to the death, and had only been overpowered after a hideous struggle. The wall-paper hung in tatters on the wall. Remnants of furniture were flung about in all directions. The door was gone. The windows were gone. The bookcase was gone, leaving no trace, but the books it had contained had been thrown all over the room in its downfall, and lay for the most part unscorched, pell-mell, one over the other. Among the books crouched an agonised tangle of wires--all that was left of Cuckoo's grand piano. The pictures had leapt wildly from the walls to join in the conflict. A few pieces of strewed gilding, as if torn asunder with pincers, showed their fate. Horror brooded over the place as over the dead body of one who had fought for his life, and died by torture, whom the destroyer had not had time to mutilate past recognition. Had the wind changed, and had the fiend of fire been forced to obey it, and leave his havoc unfinished? Yes, the wind must have changed, for at the next step down the passage, Janet reached Cuckoo's boudoir. The door had fallen inward, and by some miracle the whole strength of the flames had rushed down the passage, leaving even the door unburnt. Janet walked over the door into the little room and stood amazed. The fire had passed by on the other side. Everything here was untouched, unchanged. The yellow china cat with an immensely long neck was still seated on its plush footstool on the hearthrug. On the sofa lay an open fashion paper, where Cuckoo had laid it down. On every table photographs of Cuckoo smiled in different attitudes. The gaudy room, with its damask panels, bore no trace of smoke, nor even of heat, save that the two palms in tubs, and the hydrangeas in the fireplace, were shrivelled up, and in the gilt bird-cage in the window was a tiny, motionless form, with outstretched wings, that would fain have flown away. For a moment Janet forgot everything except the bullfinch--the piping bullfinch that Monkey Brand had given to his wife. She ran to the cage, brushing against the palms, which made a dry rustling as she passed, and bent over the little bird. "Bully," she said. "Bully!" For that was the name which, after much thought, Monkey Brand had bestowed upon it. But "Bully" did not move. He was pressed against the bars of his Chinese pagoda, with his head thrown back and his beak open. "Bully" had known fear before he died. Janet suddenly remembered the great fear which some one else was enduring, to whom death was coming, and she turned quickly from the window.