“Call to them,” said the woman who had directed the men, “tell them to have courage, courage!” The strong man to whom she spoke essayed to do as she told him. He hoarsely cried out, but his voice weakened and broke into weeping. He was completely unnerved. At this terrible moment there came a noise like rolling thunder on the bridge, and in another instant all the appliances for quenching fire and for rescue were in the eager hands of a hundred feverish workers. Deluging streams of water poured on to the flames which surrounded the band on the roof. Ladders were quickly hoisted, and borne in strong arms, arms to whom woman was precious as never before, the lame girl, without the smell of fire upon her garments, was gently placed upon the ground beside the woman. As they embraced each other I heard the lame girl call her “Allegra.” The men who had been her companions, and who had been tenderly assisted to the ground, eyed them at a little distance with haggard, pathetic interest. It was three o’clock in the morning when Mr. Lister and I, in company with a host of wan and forlorn-looking men, re-crossed the bridge and betook ourselves toward our homes. With faces blackened by smoke, their clothing torn and burnt, their beards singed, and without coats, hats or shoes, they looked like the stern and ravaged remnant of some historic Old Guard returning from a desperate assault. Jaded as I was, I remember that the thought of burning Moscow and the desperate, heroic retreat of Marshall Ney and his valiant rear guard, passed vaguely through my mind. But at the homes toward which these men were turning, there were no women to meet them with tears of love and pity, and to bind up their wounds with tender hands! They sternly entered their empty homes in silence. But so utterly exhausted was I with the excitement of the night, that this strange, pathetic spectacle did not greatly move me. Mr. Lister and I, without exchanging a word, staggered up the steps of his house like drunken men. But though I was nearly worn out with fatigue, the thought of going to my room and of being alone with my thoughts was utterly intolerable. I knew that I could not sleep. The excitement of the struggle with fire in which we had just been engaged the anticipation of the curious parade which I was to witness on the morrow, to say nothing of the strange revelations which had crowded upon me in the past two days, made sleep a sheer impossibility. And yet it seemed to me that I must have some diversion or I should go mad. What to do I knew not.