The Lodge, sandwiched in between the Chapel on one side and Hall on the other, is the oldest portion of the College buildings, dating from pre-Reformation times. Looking up, now, at the low narrow windows of the third floor, I saw, as others had just seen, in the light of a sudden outburst of flame, a girl’s face, her arms outstretched in agonised appeal between the heavy bars. ‘Alice,’ the Master cried aloud, for the moment losing his fine composure. ‘Alice, left behind in the blue bedroom! I thought she was here. And—merciful powers—the fire between us and her!’ Careless of the restraints of age and of his official position, he broke away, almost roughly, from poor Mrs. Dynevor, who clung to him weeping, and rushed towards the side door. A sudden energy seizing me—I was half maddened already by pity and excitement—I kept pace with him. ‘Show me where? Tell me how to reach the blue room, sir,’ I cried; and calling to the nearest fireman, we three went on into the burning house—while awed silence fell upon the crowd without. What a labyrinth of a place it was, all wainscotted and panelled too, the woodwork like so much tinder from age and dry rot! We ran through passages choked with acrid fumes, up stairs dripping with foul water, past the doors of pleasant studious rooms where we heard the fire hissing and crackling within; finally half-way down a long corridor—and there we stopped short. Ahead of us stretched an apparently impenetrable barrier of smoke; and beyond it, felt rather than seen, a redness of bellowing flame. Three times we pushed forward into the smoke, and thrice staggered back half senseless. The third time I got far enough to find the floor burning and crumbling beneath my feet. All ingress was cut off. ‘Ah! the poor child, the poor doomed child,’ the Master wailed, stirred to the depths of his kindly and genial nature. ‘She must die—and, oh! my God, what a death.’ ‘Can they raise no ladder to the window from the court? I asked, distracted by the sight of my old friend’s grief. ‘What use? You forget the bars.’ ‘Can we break through no party-wall?—from a side room?’ ‘Yes—a side room. The door is there—within the smoke—on the left, if you can reach it. God bless you for the thought—and we may save her yet.’ ‘Have you an axe?’ I cried to the fireman. ‘Trust me for that, sir,’ he answered. And we again passed into the curtain of smoke, hand in hand, I foremost. Choking, blinded, stifled, in a hideous light which yet was almost total darkness, I groped along the wall for the door. It could not have been more than five yards off, but those yards seemed to lengthen into miles. The Master gave in, not from lack of courage or determination, but simply from physical exhaustion—and, with a groan, fell fainting. ‘Carry him back,’ I panted, and feeling for the fireman’s hand snatched the axe from it. ‘Come back, too, sir,’ he whispered hoarsely, ‘or you’re a dead man.’