The falling roof of the house he had just quitted, when it sank with its dreadful crash, was within an ace of taking him with it. It was a fearful moment, but he surmounted it, and attempted to proceed at the instant the crowd caught sight of him. He heard not their cry, saw nothing, thought not of aught but the endeavour to reach a place of safety with her. He strained every nerve and sinew to accomplish his object, but human endurance, though backed by the urgings and influence of a strong will, has its limits. He now reached that point when, with sickening dismay, he found his strength failing him, and although his firmness and determination were unshaken, his power to go on was departing. To slacken his tenacious hold was to be hurled into the yawning gulph of fire behind him. He knew this well; that knowledge had as yet sustained him, and he clung to the roof still with desperation, resolved, notwithstanding the quivering of his fingers, the agonising aching of the arm which supported Flora, and the trembling of his knees, to continue to the last his exertions to save the maiden, or to pass out of life with her. Slowly rising up, as before, he made a clutch at the top of the roof, and caught it, but he found that, beyond drawing himself and the form of the senseless girl a little higher, he could do no more. It required an effort of unusual strength to reach the summit, where he believed he could remain safe until rescued, and that effort exhausted nature was incapable of making. Nay, he felt that he could but a few minutes longer cling there, and if some Heaven-sent aid did not reach him, his almost superhuman exertions would have been made in vain. He remained motionless, trying to recover his spent breath, and, while in this position, the hoarse cries of the people thronging in the streets reached his ears, and seemed to rouse him from his slowly approaching listless inanition. He breathed a prayer; a thought what Flora yet might be to him, and what that great world, of which he had yet seen so little, might have in store for him, flashed through his brain. The effect upon him was like the sound of a trumpet to the soldier at the moment of some fearful charge, in which death is the alternative of glory. He drew himself upwards, struggling with the obstacles which seemed to try and force him backwards, and, almost with a scream upon his lips, he found himself oscillating upon the spot he had with such trying exertion sought to reach, exhausted, and unable to make another effort. A shadow fell upon him; he turned his feeble eyes upon the occasion of it, and saw one of the fire brigade, who, having laid a short ladder against the side of the roof, had mounted it and reached him. Behind this man rose up the helmet of a second fireman, closely following his comrade in his work of mercy.