At the foot of the hill the heat was blistering. Planks a hundred feet from the blaze were smoking; the light was blinding, and even the boldest of the spectators had retired half-way up the hill. Yet two engines had been pushed forward almost to the border of the flame-covered area; and the firemen, attacking the conflagration with reckless energy, could be seen dragging their hose over planks that still glowed with half-extinguished embers. At the entrance to this inferno my eye was caught by a reminder of difficulties that stirred my heart to a leap of apprehension. A long sign-board that had been set across the gate to the lumber-yards, now twisted and ready to fall from the half-burned uprights that supported it, bore across its face the words, "The Kendrick Lumber and Milling Co." Another of Wharton Kendrick’s activities was destroyed, and hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of his property was now represented by a few acres of roaring flames. For a minute I was struck motionless with the fear that this loss might prove the final blow, and bring down in one avalanche the accumulated difficulties that I had evaded or postponed. Then I was roused to attention by the words: "Here is the man who can tell you all about it; he’s the one that turned in the alarm." The speaker wore the badge of an assistant chief of the fire department, and he was addressing two young men who held pencil and paper in their hands and looked eagerly at a roughly dressed man who seemed to be dazed at the destruction that was going on about him. "Yes, I’m the man," he said slowly. "I’m a watchman. I was over there on the wharf--the Beale Street wharf. A while ago--it was a long time ago--" "Never mind the long while ago--tell us about to-night," interrupted one of the young men impatiently. "That’s what I was telling you about," said the man in an injured tone. "It was a long while ago--to-night. I looked over here just the other side of that oil warehouse--there’s only one wall left to it now--an’ I saw a fellow strike a match. I thought he was goin’ to light his pipe, but he took a box from under his arm an’ stuck the match in it. The box flared up as though it was full o’ shavings, an’ then he stuck it under a lumber-pile. I hollered at him, an’ he ran. Then the fire started up, an’ I got to the fire-box an’ turned in the alarm. Then there was hell to pay." The man made this announcement in a dull, matter-of-fact way that gave a touch of comedy-in-tragedy to his words. "What sort of looking man was he?" I asked. "Oh, he was an oldish man--an old man--tall, an’ sort of stooped." "Stout or thin?" "Thin, I guess--he was too far away for me to say for sure, an’ bein’ as I was kind of flustered by the fire, too."