“All out, sir!” he shouted. “Thank God for that!” said Sartwell. “Come down at once. There’s not a moment to lose.” “I’ll be down as soon as you are, sir. Run!” The manager stumbled down the crackling stair, not doubting but Braunt followed. “Now, ye crawling serpent, I’m going to keep ye here till ye’re singed. I saw your villainy, ye coward!” The terror-stricken man mistook the purport of Braunt’s words, and thus lost all chance of life. “I swear to God, I didn’t mean it!” he cried. “The match dropped before I knowed it. God’s truth, it did, Braunt!” “What! Ye fired th’ works! Ye! With the women here ye tried to starve! Ye dropped the match! Ye crawling, murderous fiend!” Braunt crouched like a wild beast about to spring, his crooked fingers, like claws, twitching nervously. Breathing in short quick gasps, for the smoke had him by the throat, his fierce eyes glittering in the flames with the fearsome light of insanity, he pounced upon his writhing victim and held his struggling figure with arms upstretched above his head. Treading over the quaking floor, he shouted: “Down, ye craven devil, into the hell ye have made!” The long, quivering shriek of the doomed man was swallowed and quenched in the torrent of fire. Braunt stood in the centre of the trembling, sagging floor, with his empty hands still above his head, his face upturned, and swaying dimly in the stifling smoke. A fireman’s axe crashed in a window; a spurt of water burst through the opening, and hissed against the ceiling. “Jessie! Jessie! Listen! the _Dead March!_ My girl! The--real--march!” With a rending crash the floor sank into the furnace. CHAPTER XXVI.