Regan, with a bitter, hard look on his face for the shops were Regan’s, was everywhere at once, and what man could do he did; but, inch by inch, the flames were getting the better of him. The yards were as bright as day now, and the heat was driving the circle of fighters back, stubbornly as they fought to hold their ground. It looked like a grand slam for the fire with the four aces in one hand. Twice Regan had been on the point of ordering the men to the roof, and twice he held back--once he had even ordered a ladder planted, only to order it away again. The building was only wood, and old, and the roof was none too strong at best; but now, under and supported by the roof of the fitting-shop, put in a month before in lieu of the old system of jacking and blocking by hand, making the risk a hundredfold greater, were the heavy steel girders and hydraulic traveling cranes that whipped the big moguls like jack-straws from their wheels preparatory to stripping them to their bare boiler-shells. Regan shook his head--it was asking a man to take his life in his hands. For the moment he stood a little apart in front of the crowd and just behind the nozzle end of one of the streams. Again he measured the chances, and again he shook his head. “I can’t ask a man to do it,” he muttered; “but we ought to have a stream up there, it’s----” “Why don’t you take it there yourself, then?”--the words came sharp and quick from his elbow, stinging hot like the cut of a whip-lash. It was “King” Gilleen, red-haired, blue-blooded, freckled-skinned Gilleen. The master mechanic whirled like a shot, and for a minute the two men stared into each other’s eyes, stared as the leaping flames sent flickering shadows across the grim, set features of them both, stared at each other face to face for the first time since that noon in the roundhouse days before. “Why don’t you take it there yourself, then?” said Gilleen again, and his laugh rang hard and cold. “_You_ ain’t a quitter, are you? There’s nothin’ wrong with _your_ blood, is there? If you’re not afraid--come on!”--as he spoke he stepped forward, pushed the men from the nozzle--and looked back at the master mechanic. Regan’s lips were like a thin, white line. Gilleen laughed out again, and it carried over the roar and the crackle of the flames, the snapping timbers, the hiss and spit of the water, the voices of the crowd. “Put up the ladder!”--it was Regan’s voice, deadly cold. “Lash a short end around that nozzle, an’ stand by to pass it up”--he was at the foot of the ladder almost before they got it in position, and the next instant began to climb. Like a flash, Gilleen, surrendering the fire-hose temporarily, sprang after him--and up. It wasn’t far--the shops were low, just one story high--and both men were on the roof in a minute. Gilleen caught the coiled rope they slung him from below, and together he and the master mechanic hauled up the writhing, spluttering hose.