him, and for them he carried sugar as a regular cargo. Thus, Mr Stodham began to be interwoven with that fellowship. I was perhaps too old for his romantic tales, but I have heard him telling Mr Morgan what he considered interesting in his own life. Whatever it was, it revealed his shyness, or his excitability, or his innocence. Once he gave a long explanation of how he came to set an uncommon value on a certain book which he was lending to Mr Morgan. Some winters before, something caused him to wake at midnight and sit up to listen, in spite of the usual powerful inclination to sleep again. At a sharp noise on the pane he threw up the window. All the flints of the road were clear in an unusual light. The white face of a policeman was looking up at him, and he heard the words “Fire!... Come down.” Rapidly half dressing as if executing an order which he did not understand, he was outside on the pavement in a minute. It was next door. The building was losing all resemblance to a barber’s shop; like mad birds the flames flew across it and out at the shuttered windows. The policeman was hammering at the door, to waken those who were in their beds above the fire. Heavily they slept, and some minutes passed before a man came down carrying an umbrella, a woman arranging her hair. The shriek of a cat followed them out of the door, but so also did the flames. Soon the shop was an oblong box containing one great upright body of fire, through which could be seen the twisted skeleton remains of iron bedsteads. Quietly the street had become packed with onlookers--curious neighbours, passers-by, and a few night-wanderers who had souls above merely keeping warm by standing against the walls of bakeries. There were three fire engines. With a low hum the jets of water yielded themselves to the fire and were part of it. Suddenly a fireman noticed that Mr Stodham’s own window was lit from within, thought that the flames had penetrated so far, and was about to direct the hose on it when Mr Stodham shook off the charm of the tumultuous glare to explain that he had left a lamp burning. The man went with him into the house, but could find no fire. Left alone in his room Mr Stodham noticed that it was hot, pleasantly hot for a January midnight. The wall that he leaned against was pleasant until he remembered the fire on the other side. He made haste to save his papers. Instead of sorting them roughly there, he proposed to remove, not the separate drawers, but the whole desk. He forgot that it had only entered the house, in the first place, after having the castors detached, and omitting to do this now, he wedged it firmly between the walls and so barricaded the main passage of the house. He took out all the contents of all the drawers, deposited them with a neighbour whom he had never before seen. Then he returned to his room. He was alone with his books, and had to choose among them, which he should take and save. They numbered several