Before the station-house was reached, another member was added to the Nicholson party. A lad of not more than five years had either wandered away from his home before his friends had felt the necessity to leave, or had become separated from them on the way. At any rate, he was doing his very best to make everybody acquainted with the fact that he was lost. To attempt to locate his friends was out of the question. Mrs. Nicholson bent over him for a moment, and her words and looks produced a quieting effect on the little lad, who at once did as he was bidden, and clung to one of the wraps on the arm of his newly-found guardian. By the time the railway station was reached the fire had made such headway that it would have been impossible to make a safe return as far as the manse, which had been left less than fifteen minutes before. The frame buildings of which most of the town was composed made the onrush of the flames the more rapid. The station platform was packed with an impatient crowd awaiting the return of the work-train which had already made two trips as far as the coke-ovens at Twyford. The line was single track, and the only rolling-stock available consisted of an antiquated engine and two dingy passenger cars with rough board seats lengthwise beneath the windows. The morning of the fire there had been added to these cars a few open coal trucks. The old engine could not make the grades with anything but a light train, so that it was seen by many how improbable it was that all those then waiting could find transportation before the buildings around them would be licked up by the approaching fire. Surrounding roofs had been saturated by the station fire-hose, but the gauge-ball on the water-tank was rapidly lowering, and the engineer at the pump-house had been compelled to leave his post half an hour before, so that at best their protection by water was a matter of only an hour or so. Yet it needed no small amount of courage to isolate oneself from the throng and to pass out of sight in that heavy cloud of smoke which prevented one seeing more than a short distance ahead. The fire now seemed to have gained headway in other directions, so that even if they went forth they might soon find themselves in a position where advance and retreat were alike impossible. Frequent explosions and loudly crackling timbers added to the anxiety of those who awaited the return of the work-train.