Ages ago, it seemed to the anxious boy, Ranny Phelps had disappeared in this same direction and had not returned. Dale had caught a disjointed word or two about water-buckets, but where they were or to what use Ranny meant to put them he did not know. With growing alarm he had watched and waited, and then, unable to stand the suspense another instant, he slipped out of the line and went to seek his friend. As he passed the double doors the smoke seemed to thicken, causing him to choke and sputter. Where was it coming from, he wondered dazedly. It was as if great volumes were pouring freely into the hall, yet the doors to the corridor had been closed from the first. He stumbled over a chair and nearly fell. Recovering, his outstretched hands struck the wall, and he began to feel his way along it. Presently his fingers gripped the edge of a door-casing, and he staggered back as a fresh burst of suffocating fumes caught his lungs with a smothering clutch. For an instant he stood there reeling. Then in a flash he remembered the coat-room, remembered the narrow pair of stairs leading down from one corner with a row of red fire-buckets on a bench beside it. These were the buckets Ranny had come for. The door to the stairs was--open! He caught his breath with a dry sob and plunged into the pitchy darkness of the smaller room. Two steps he took--three. Then his foot struck against something, and he fell forward over a body stretched out on the floor, his out-thrust arms reaching beyond it. For a moment he thought it was all over. His senses were swimming in the clouds of deadly smoke pouring up from below, and it took an appreciable second or two to realize that the thing one hand clutched instinctively was the edge of an open door. Almost as instinctively he summoned all his strength and flung it to. The resulting slam came as something indistinct and far away. He wondered if he were losing consciousness, and in the same breath his jaw squared with the stubborn determination that he would not--he must not! As he reached up to tear the wide handkerchief from about his neck his fingers brushed the silver cross pinned to his left breast, and the touch seemed to give him fresh courage. With feverish haste he felt for Ranny's wrists, knotted the neckerchief about them, and, drawing them over his head, began to crawl toward the door. Too late he remembered the water in the buckets and wished he had thought to dip a handkerchief in that to breathe through. Doubtless it was that very idea which had brought Ranny himself here. But he did not dare turn back, and after all, now that the stair door was closed, the smoke did not seem quite so dense, especially down here on the floor.