“Eureka! score one for Sir Claude de Wycherley. Must practice that little game; save immense amount of trouble. Hard on the bottle, though. Now to woo the gentle goddess of slumber. Think of the untold thousands rolling on feather beds and hair mattresses. Little they know of the genuine luxury of a shuck bed. This is comfort now, you bet.” The night wind sighs through a hole in a window pane, and lulled by this music, supplemented by the ringing of engine bells, and an occasional shriek from a switching locomotive, Wycherley falls asleep. For an hour or two only his stentorian breathing can be heard in the tenement room. Then the man on the cot suddenly sits up. His room is no longer in darkness. “Jove! that was a beastly dream I had. What a pleasure to awaken and find it was only a dream. Can it be morning? What the devil is all that racket outside, people shouting? Bless me! I believe it’s the engines pumping. There must be a fire in the neighborhood. I’m sorry for the poor wretches; never took any enjoyment seeing a house burn. Tchew! bless my soul, the room’s half full of smoke. Think I’ll get up and investigate. Too bad to have a gentleman’s slumbers disturbed in this way, but I’m interested now, because, you know, it might be the Hotel des Vagabonde that is ablaze.” While he thus communes with himself he gropes around for the lost shoe, and draws it on. Then he goes to the door. As he opens it a volume of smoke pours in. He instantly closes the door again. “I declare, it is this house, after all. Another experience, my boy. My palatial mansion is doomed, I fear. Ho! for the salvage corps. Is my account book, the repository of millions, safe? Then let the fire demon do his worst.” He even stops to button his collar; then seizing the lean grip, he waves his hand around him in a majestic way. “The best of friends must part. Many happy hours have I spent here. Alas! that it should end thus. Farewell, farewell, and if forever, then forever fare thee well.” He opens the door and steps into the hall. “Great Scott!” he exclaims. Dense smoke fills the hallway. The crackling of flames makes mad music, and when this is supplemented by the shrieks of terrified women, shouts of firemen, the throbbing of engines, and a dull roar from the dense crowd that collected like magic under such circumstances, the result is a combination that once heard can never be forgotten. Wycherley looks down the stairway and immediately draws back again. Even his remarkable nerve is shaken by the sight. Besides, he hears cries near by that tell him he is not the only one imprisoned in the upper story of this old tenement, now in flames--cries that can only come from a terrified woman. “Think, old boy, and if ever you cudgeled your brains, do so now. It’s useless trying to get out below--rather too warm for comfort. How about the other way?”