“Let her come to the window,” said Sheila, and room was made for her there. But nobody could keep still or help starting and shuddering at every sound from without. They could hear what a tumult was going on in another street, and it was hard to bear being shut up here; yet every messenger who went out for news came back saying they were safest where they were. Then a sudden cheer arose from North and the youths about him, and in dashed Oscar, crying out— “Here comes the fire-escape round the corner, with Lionel Benson to guide it! He has got out all right, and has brought it for us. Now we are as safe as anything! Good old Lionel! Now then, ladies, one at a time! We will have you all safe directly.” Sheila suddenly went sick and white with the revulsion of feeling, and May, seizing Miss Adene’s hands, sobbed out— “Oh, Cousin Mary, Cousin Mary, God has heard us, after all! I’m afraid I did not quite believe He would!” The next minute a helmeted figure was among them, quietly settling matters, and sending one girl after another down the shoot, to be received with cries and cheers by those below. But it took some little time, and Miss Adene, disengaging her hands from May’s, said quietly— “I should like to go and have one more look into the hall. I shall have plenty of time before my turn comes.” “Oh, let me go with you!” cried Sheila eagerly, and May, too, was filled with a sudden, timid, and irresistible curiosity. Oscar, who was standing beside his sister, took her hand at once, and said— “Come, then, and see! But I think the worst is over now. They have had the hose at work some while now. But the place is like a kiln; you could hardly get through it now.” And, indeed, when the doors were opened, such a volume of hot, reeking steam came pouring in that it was with difficulty they could see anything. The steady sound of pumping was in their ears, and through the gloom they could still see darting tongues of flame rising up from the charred masses of woodwork and drapery that had once been gaily-decked stalls. The hiss of the water, the moving shapes of the firemen with their shining helmets, the desolation of the scene as compared with what it had been an hour before was something rather terrible to contemplate; and Sheila, clinging to Oscar’s arm, whispered a frightened query— “Oh, tell me, has anybody been killed?” “I believe not—I hope not; but some have been hurt and more have been terribly frightened. If the ladies with the children had not behaved splendidly when it broke out, they say there must have been a fearful loss of life; but nobody knows any details yet.” “I think the only person who has absolutely disgraced himself is my brother Cyril,” said North, coming up to look for the missing ladies, his face still wearing the stern, set look that had characterised it throughout. That he felt Cyril’s behaviour keenly was self-evident. May took the arm he offered her, and said in her gracious way—