Perhaps one of the best and first specimens of enterprise which occurred on the night of the fire was that which was displayed by the chief officers of the Western Union Telegraph Company. The office was burned down, and only the books and some of the instruments were saved. The Fairville wire would not work, and no means of sending abroad intelligence of the ruin of the doomed city remained. It was fully eleven o'clock when R. T. Clinch, Esq., the superintendent of the company, Mr. Thos. Robinson, the manager, Mr. Dawson, Mr. Black and other gentlemen connected with the company, met the writer of these pages on Germain Street. The fire was still raging, though not at all fiercely in the lower part of the city. The party went down to the railway station, and we give an illustration of the building so that the reader may see the temporary Western Union Telegraph Office during the first few days of the fire, and after a little while a wire was put in working order. The first and only dispatch which left the city that night, and which on Thursday morning was read all over Canada, and in the United States, was sent forward, and each page was telegraphed as rapidly as it was written. In the morning the office was ready to receive and deliver messages, and those who stood by the counter, and every day watched the enormous crowd of people all anxious to be served first, can realize how hard the operators had to work in order to meet the requirements of the citizens. At one time there were between five and six hundred messages on the operator's table, and the sender might consider himself fortunate if his telegram got off three hours after it was written. Some miscreants in some instances cut the wires a few days after the fire, and the company had to send out twenty-five or thirty patrol men to look after them. Mr. Clinch lost no time in getting suitable quarters for the patrons of the company, and in a week he had a comfortable office, working finely, in the Market House. He began work at once on the new building which the company intend putting up, and in six months the new telegraph office will be ready for occupancy on its old site at the foot of King Street. [Illustration: THE TEMPORARY W. U. TEL. OFFICE.] CHAPTER XII. A Thrilling Incident--The Burning House--The Tall Figure in the Hall--Escape cut off--The only Way Out--The Street of Fire-- Walking on Coals--The Open Boat--The way to the Wharf--Terrible Suffering--The Awful Death in the Street--Worn Out--The Escape --Saved--The Firemen--How they Fought the Flames.