Jenny clutched the baby to her bosom, and he slammed the door to. It was not the first time he had met fire and he understood it. He wetted a handkerchief and tied it over his own mouth. There were some who would have wondered at his swiftness, and the cool courage of him in so threatening a fight. He bound wet rags across the brave lifted mouth of Jenny, and the child cried as he did the same for him. Then he caught her in his arms and rushed the stairs, and as he ran he called aloud, "Sam, Sam!" The smoke was pungent, acrid, suffocating, and the heat of the air already cracked the skin. Out of the smoke he saw licking tongues of flame, flame curious and avid, searching, strenuous, alive. One tongue licked at him and he smelt, among all the other odours of the fire, the smell of singed hair. He heard the crying of the child, its outraged mind working angrily. Jenny whimpered a little. Her hand was steel about him. He rushed an opaque veil of blinding smoke, interpenetrated by lightnings, and bull-headed burst in Sam's door. He heard the boy cry out. But they were saved, if it were not that Pete stood outside to kill those whom he had driven from their shelter. That might be; Quin knew it. And yet he could not go first. Sam caught his arm. "Oh, oh, Mista Quin!" he cried, "oh, oh, velly dleadful, my much aflaid." Sam had pluck enough, as he had more than once shown when some white young hoodlums of the town had small-ganged him. But when fire is the master many are not brave. "Open the window," said Quin. Outside to the ground was a drop of twelve feet. But the ground was hard. Quin put Jenny down by the window and got a blanket from the boy's bed. "Out you go first, Sam," he said. But Sam, though not "blave" and "velly much aflaid," knew it was the right thing for the "Missus" to go first. "Oh, no, Mista Quin, my no go first. Missus she go and litty chilo. My not too much aflaid." He trembled like a leaf all the same. "Get out of the window chop-chop," said Quin in a voice that Sam had only heard once before when he had dared to be insolent. He sprang to the window, and, clutching the blanket that Quin held, he slid to the ground. "Now my catchee Missus," he said exultantly. And with the fire beneath the boards of the room, Quin had no choice. He tied a quilt round Jenny's waist and lowered her and the child till Sam could touch her. He let go, and sliding down the blanket, which he had made fast to the frame of Sam's bed, he, too, reached the ground safely. And people came running up the hill. Whether this was Pete's work or not they were safe. But their house was a torch, the flames soared above the gambrel of the roof.