“It afterwards appeared that the girl, awaked by the smoke, called her bedfellow, ran downstairs and alarmed those who slept on the first floor, about the same time that the discovery was made by the boy who slept under the closet, and who saw the fire as he lay in bed, through a ventilator in the ceiling which opened through the floor of the closet. The woman, instead of following her companion, actuated by one of those inexplicable motives which sometimes influence the conduct of the uneducated, remained in the room very deliberately dressing herself, and I afterwards learned that when I carried her out of the room her stays were very regularly laced. When she did attempt an escape, owing to her alarm, her want of knowledge of the arrangement of the rooms, and the density of the smoke, she was unable to find the door, and, after groping about the room some time, she said that she ‘threw herself on the bed, and gave herself up for lost.’ Next to effecting her escape, or making some noise which would have alarmed those who were about, throwing herself on the bed was the best thing; for had she been elsewhere I never should have found her, as the smoke was so thick that I could not discover a single object in the room, and only found the bed by knowing its situation from having been frequently in the room. If we had known at the time we were in the next room, immediately after the first alarm, that she was there, she would have been rescued without any difficulty. The poor woman’s obstinacy cost her her life, for although she was not in the least burnt, yet such was the effect of the smoke upon her lungs, together with the alarm, that the next day she became exceedingly ill, and although we procured for her the best medical advice the town afforded, she died in a few days. The surgeon who attended her said that she died of a disease to which she had long been subject, an enlargement of the heart, which was brought on in this instance by the causes I have before stated. “The engines arrived shortly after. I had provided for them a stock of water by placing some large tubs in the front of the house, which we filled with water before the engines came. One of our pumps was undergoing repairs at the time, so that it did not afford us any water. The other very soon became dry; but we found an excellent supply from a pit a little nearer to the town, on the right side of the road. Five men, for the promise of five shillings each, stood in the water to fill the buckets, and such was the rapidity of the supply, that not one of the engines was for an instant without water.