On this occasion Decker arrived, entered the hotel at the command of his chief, and ascended the staircase, in order to save some women who were supposed to be in one of the upper floors. That was the last seen of him, and late that night when the rest of his company had been relieved and were slowly making their way home, they spoke little of anything or anybody, save Frank Decker, who was among the missing and who had gone down before that awful sheet of flame that broke out and swept through the hotel about five minutes after he was seen to enter the building. Half a dozen charred bodies were taken from the ruins the next day, but which one of them had once been Frank Decker no one could tell. And while the father had been at work in the fire department, the child whom he had left in the little village in the northern part of the State, had grown in health, strength and mind, and was now in his sixteenth year, an active, vigorous, straightforward youth, who inherited all his father’s daring and quickness, together with a willingness to learn and a decided taste for books, which had come to him direct from his mother. During his short life he had cherished but one ambition, which was to become a fireman, and most of the correspondence which he always maintained with his father, had been in regard to the workings of the New York department, and particularly the battalion to which the elder belonged. Once a year the father had returned to his old home on the shore of the great fresh water lake to spend his short vacation with his boy, and during these visits it had been the habit of the two to take long walks and sails together, enjoying themselves after their own fashion, the boy listening with flushed cheeks and bated breath, while his father described to him the life of excitement and danger which he led as a member of what he always called, “the greatest fire department in the world.” From his father’s lips the boy had heard stories of the swift runs to fires, of thrilling midnight rescues, of brave firemen plunging into solid sheets of smoke and flame, and so strong a hold had these stories taken on his mind that his desire to become a fireman himself had slowly grown within him, until it became the one fixed and cherished ambition of his life. So it happened, naturally enough, that at his father’s death he resolved to make his way to New York and ask John Trask, the chief of his father’s old battalion, to appoint him to a place in the Department. We have described in an earlier part of this chapter the arrival of Bruce Decker, footsore and travel-stained at the truck house, and his reception at the hands of the chief and his subordinates, and we left him going out for dinner under the guidance of his newly-made friend.