“You don’t understand,” retorted Holtzer, full of sentiment. “You can’t get away from it. It ain’t thinking what’s going to happen to _me_, so much, as thinking how Mary Ellen will feel about it when she hears.” “You’re awful dead certain on that part of it,” said Dick, and now he hated his friend. The last vestige of humor had left the theme. “Perhaps she won’t care a cuss--how do you know?” Holtzer started to answer, while Dick listened, his hands clenched tight--maybe there was something he didn’t know about? There was no more time for conversation. As they turned the corner they saw their destination, an eight-storied storage warehouse, standing alone, with boarded vacant lots at each side of it. The watchman was there with the keys; it was he who had turned in the alarm. Without delay the firemen, hauling the hose up after them, swarmed to the roof where the flames were beginning to curl. The fire was in the back of the upper story. While some fought it on that level, the others cut holes through the roof and turned the streams down upon it. The hose leaked and slippery ponds formed in an instant where the water fell. The wind sawed into one’s marrow in this utterly exposed position. A head popped up and called off all the men but Holtzer and Dick. “You fellers hold her down as best you can!” it shouted. “Keep a watch and don’t let it break through--come on, the rest of yer!” They worked in silence on Dick’s part, and with a continued rattle of what Mary Ellen would think of this from Holtzer. It wrought harder and harder on his companion’s nerves, this prattle--indeed, such waves of rage came over him that he entirely forgot where he was. Meanwhile the crowd below--gathered in strong numbers in spite of the weather and the hour--were wondering what must be the thoughts of those men standing over a furnace, a hundred feet from the ground. What could either man think of but the danger? The danger of one’s daily work? There is no such thing. This was a commonplace fire which soon would be well in hand. It had not in the least turned the current of the thoughts of the two men aloft who formed the spectacle, while the household gods below made burnt-offerings of themselves. Then, as if to show that no fire is commonplace, a giant flare sprang from the corner of the building, poised in the air for a moment, then, overthrown by the wind, toppled toward the firemen. They leaped back--one to safety; the other, slipping on a treacherous skin of ice, to fight vainly for his balance for a second, and then to plunge down the mansard roof, speeding for that hard ground so far away. It was a trained man who fell, though. He turned as he went, instinctively gripping with his hands, and they caught--the edge of the cornice--an ice-covered edge to which they clung miraculously, while his body dangled in the wind.