She solved the question for him herself by suddenly wrenching her hands from his and making a rapid exit through the open door. It did not occur to him to follow her. Instead he threw all his energies into the task of subduing the flames. He tore down the heavy satin hangings and trampled them beneath his feet, he found an ewer of water and deluged the smoking cushions of the chairs and lounges fighting bravely amid the smoke and fire, reckless that his strong hands were torn and burned with the superhuman efforts that he made. CHAPTER LIII. But when all was done that a brave and energetic man could do Mr. Rodney found that his efforts had been spent in vain. The maniac fire-fiend had fired the filmy lace curtains and the blaze ran along the inflammable material, licking it up with a fiery tongue of flame and mounting to the ceiling where it ignited the curtain-rods and then the ceiling. The lawyer gazed at it an instant, and seeing the leaping tongues of flame spurting out he realized that he could do no more toward stopping the fire. He ran out of the smoking-room to give the alarm in the street, forgetting for a moment the terrible deed he had done and that his own safety demanded instant flight. Rushing wildly down the stairs he encountered Mrs. Griffin coming up at a pace as headlong as his own. She caught him entreatingly by the arm. “Oh, sir,” she cried “you have not quite killed him! He breathes yet--he can talk a little. Oh for pity’s sake bring some one to him. I cannot leave him alone to go myself.” Her words recalled him to himself. In the excitement of the past few moments he had momently forgotten that down-stairs in the wide hall lay a man whom he had ruthlessly slain. It rushed over him now with a keen pang of remorse. “He lives!” he exclaimed and there was a keen note of relief in his voice. Already the thought of murder had begun to lie heavily on his hitherto unspotted soul. “Yes, and you must bring a doctor quick,” Mrs. Griffin said imploringly. He glanced back up the wide stairway into the hall. It was already filled with a volume of thick smoke that was pouring out from the doorway of the room he had just quitted. “Look!” he said. Her glance followed his. “My God! have you fired the house?” she cried, in a terrified tone. “No; but it was fired by the hand of a deformed maniac in that room you quitted,” he answered. “And she?” cried Mrs. Griffin. “Has escaped!” he answered. “Oh, I always thought it would come to this!” cried the housekeeper, wringing her plump hands. “I thought she would murder us all in our beds, or set fire to the house; and she has done it, just as I thought she would. And where is she, Mr. Rodney--not in that room, surely?” “No; she ran away after she had half strangled me!” he replied, with a shudder at the remembrance of the uncanny creature.