“The scaffolding is terribly against saving it, and the wind is high, too,” said Raeburn, scanning the place all over with his keen eyes. Then, as an idea seemed to strike him, he suddenly hurried forward once more, and Erica saw him speaking to two fire brigade men. In another minute the soldiers motioned the crowd further back, Raeburn rejoined Erica, and, picking up her portmanteau, took her across the road to the steps of a neighboring hotel. “I've suggested that they should cut down the scaffolding,” he said; “it is the only chance of saving the place.” The whole of the woodwork was now on fire; to cut it down was a somewhat dangerous task, but the men worked gallantly, and in a few minutes the huge blazing frame, with its poles and cross poles, ladders and platforms, swayed, quivered, then fell forward with a crash into the garden beyond. Raeburn had, as usual, attracted to himself the persons most worth talking to in the crowd, a shrewd-looking inhabitant of Innsbruck, spectacled and somewhat sallow, but with a face which was full of intellect. He learned that, although no one could speak positively as to the origin of the fire, it was more than probable that it had been no mere accident. The very Sunday before, at exactly the same hour, a large factory had been entirely destroyed by fire, and it needed no very deep thinker to discover that a Sunday evening, when every one would be out-of-doors keeping holiday, and the fire brigade men scattered and hard to summon, was the very time for incendiarism. They learned much from the shrewd citizen about the general condition of the place, which seemed outwardly too peaceful and prosperous for such wild and senseless outbreaks. “If, as seems probable, this is the act of some crazy socialist, he has unwittingly done harm to the cause of reform in general,” said Raeburn to Erica when the informant had passed on. “Those papers for Hasenbalg were important ones, and, if laid hold of by unfriendly hands, might do untold harm. Socialism is the most foolish system on earth. Inevitably it turns to this sort of violence when the uneducated have seized on its main idea. “After all, I believe they will save the house,” said Erica. “Just look at those men on the top, how splendidly they are working!” It was, in truth, a grand, though a very horrible sight to see the dark forms toiling away, hewing down the burning rafters with an absolute disregard to their personal safety. These were not firemen, but volunteers chimney-sweeps, as one of the crowd informed Raeburn and it was in the main owing to their exertions that the fire was at length extinguished.