Wenderholme was a lofty house, with a long lateral corridor on each story. As they ascended, the smell of burning strongly increased. The lower corridors were lighted--all the guests' rooms were there. But the uppermost corridor, where the servants' rooms and the nurseries were, was not permanently lighted, as the servants took their own bed-candlesticks from below. When the Colonel got there he could not see, and he could not breathe. Volumes of dense smoke rolled along the dark passages. He ran blindly in the direction of Edith's room. Philip tried to follow, but the suffocating atmosphere affected his more delicate organization with tenfold force, and he was compelled to draw back. He stood on the top of the great staircase, agitated by mortal anxiety. But the Colonel himself, strong as he was, could not breathe that atmosphere for long. He came back out of the darkness, his hands over his face. Even on the staircase the air was stifling, but to him, who had breathed thick fire, it was comparative refreshment. He staggered forward to the banister, and grasped it. This for three or four seconds, then he ran down the stairs without uttering one word. The two passed swiftly through a complicated set of passages on the ground-floor and reached one of the minor staircases, of which there were five or six at Wenderholme. This one led directly to the nurseries above, and was their most commonly used access. When they came to this, John Stanburne turned round, paused for an instant, and said, "Come with me, Philip; it's our last chance. Poor little Edith! O God, O God!" In this narrow stair there was no light whatever. The Colonel ran up it, or leaped up it, in a series of wild bounds, like a hunted animal. Philip kept up with him as he could. As they rose higher and higher the temperature quickly increased: the walls were hot--it was the temperature of a heated oven. The Colonel tried to open a door, but the brass handle burnt his hand. Then he burst it open by pushing against it with his shoulder. A gust of air rushed up the staircase, and in an instant the room they were trying to enter was illuminated by a burst of flame. For a second the paper was visible--a pretty, gay paper, with tiny flowers, suitable for a young girl's room--and a few engravings on the walls, and the pink curtains of a little French bed.