On these and the other edges of the district a wide belt of destruction was created by the fighters. This belt, the tradesmen, running to and fro with water wagons filled constantly at the aqueduct, wet down and soaked until it was almost a water wall. So furiously had they worked that the main progress of the fire was checked in seven or eight hours, and although certain buildings and ruins smoked and even blazed for several days afterward, yet the great danger passed when this well-soaked belt of destruction was completed. When Pan Andrew returned to the tower in the full blaze of the morning sun, nearly one third of the city of Krakow lay in ruins. Fortunately it was not the better portion of the city, and many of the old wooden-built hovels had been there since before the days of Kazimir the Great; that monarch had successfully converted about one half the city of Krakow from wood to stone more than one hundred years before; had he not done so it is probable that the fire of 1462 might have utterly consumed it. Elzbietka and Joseph’s mother were asleep on the trumpeter’s bed clasped in each other’s arms. Joseph sat outside the compartment with the hourglass before him on a beam, gazing out over the smoking ruins of the university quarter. “Is the city saved?” was the first question he asked his father. “It is not now in danger,” answered Pan Andrew. “But there are many homeless souls in the city this day.” “Did you see the alchemist?” “I did not. He has disappeared as if he had flown away on the clouds of smoke that covered the city.” “Poor Elzbietka,” exclaimed Joseph. The girl inside the compartment moaned slightly as her name was spoken, although she was deep in a heavy slumber. “I wonder if he was caught in the loft?” mused Pan Andrew. “It was in the very center of the burned district.” The answer to his question came with sudden unexpectedness. There was a sound of footsteps on the stairs and Jan Kanty’s head appeared from below. The scholar was leading another man by the arm, a man who had been in the fire—his charred clothes and blackened face showed it; around his shoulders and falling to his waist was all that remained of what had once been a black robe. He kept his hands beneath this robe. “Pan Andrew,” whispered Jan Kanty softly, “I have found in the street—Pan Kreutz.” And, checking the other’s startled exclamation, he explained, “He is not in his right senses. Something has affected his brain. But he has here something of interest to us all.” Pan Andrew turned toward Kreutz—he never would have recognized him had not Jan Kanty identified him; Joseph felt his eyes glued with strange eagerness upon the eerie, blackened figure and the mysterious folded hands beneath the robe; it had been a scholar’s robe once.