Maidie's had evidently been the last room visited. The dressing-table and wardrobe of the opposite chamber--that occupied by Colonel and Mrs. Brent--had been ransacked. The colonel's watch and chain,--too bulky, he said, to be worn at dinner in white uniform,--his Loyal Legion and Army of the Potomac insignia, and some prized though not expensive trinkets of his good wife were gone. Miss Porter's little purse with her modest savings and a brooch that had been her mother's were missing. And with these items the skilled practitioner had made good his escape. On the floor, just under the window in Maidie's room, lay a keen, double-edged knife. The stumps of two or three matches found in the colonel's apartment and others in Miss Porter's showed that the thief had not feared to make sufficient light for his purpose, and from the floor of Marion's room, close to the bureau, just where it had been dropped when the prowler was alarmed, Miss Porter picked up one of the old-fashioned "phosphors" that ignite noiselessly and burn with but a tiny flame. Marion's porte-monnaie was in the upper drawer, untouched, and such jewelry as she owned, save two precious rings she always wore, was stored in her father's safe deposit box in the bank at home. The colonel was really the greatest loser and declared it served him right, both provost-marshal and chief of police having warned him to leave nothing "lying around loose." At sound of the shots on the Calle Nueva, Brent had sallied forth, and, rushing impetuously into the dimly lighted thoroughfare, had narrowly missed losing the top of his head as well as his watch, an excited sentry sending a bullet whizzing into space by way of the colonel's pith helmet, which prompted the doctor to say in his placid and most effective way that more heads had been lost that night than valuables, and one bad shot begat another. Sentries down towards the barracks, hearing the three or four quick reports, bethought them of the time-honored instructions prescribing that in case of a blaze, which he could not personally extinguish, the sentry should "shout 'Fire!' discharge his piece, and add the number of his post." Sagely reasoning that nothing but a fire could start such a row, or at least that there was sufficient excuse to warrant their having some fun of their own to enliven the dull hours of the night, Numbers 7 and 8 touched off their triggers and yelled "Fire;" 5 and 6, nearer home, followed suit, and in two minutes the bugles were blowing the alarm all over Ermita and Malate, and rollicking young regulars and volunteers by the hundred were tumbling out into the street, all eagerness and rejoicing at the prospect of having a lark with the _Bomberos_, the funny little Manila firemen with their funnier little squirts on wheels.