"Well, they have managed to prevent its getting across Tremont Street; in fact, they have held it on both east and west. You see, most of the railroad yards below the South Station were cleared in time, and that left little or no fuel on the east side. The fire now, instead of having a clean sweep from the Common to the Channel, has a path barely half that width. It is now as far south as Oak Street, and Hollis Street west of that." "Dear me! Has the good old Hollis Theater gone, then?" "I don't see how it could very well have escaped. But it wasn't a very attractive theater, though, anyway. Why do you ask about it? They have needed a new building there for a long time." "Yes--but some of the happiest evenings I have ever had were there. It isn't the upholstery of the seats or the mural decorations or what the theater looks like, but what you hear there. Don't you think that a theater gets to retain some of its traditions and its greatest associations? It sounds as though I were an old woman; but every time I go there, I seem to feel that the theater remembers, just as I do, the thrills that its walls have known." "Would you rather it had been left to be torn down, then?" inquired her uncle, with a smile. "Well, possibly not. That would be worse than this. Perhaps it is better to 'give her to the God of Storms,' after all." "Perhaps," agreed Mr. Osgood, gently. For a half an hour longer they talked, and he told them as much as he knew of what already had been destroyed, and what the final reckoning would unclose. He spoke as cheerfully as he could, but Helen, watching him closely, saw that back of this there was a profound sadness. "Is it so very terrible, Uncle Silas?" she asked at last, laying her hand affectionately on his sleeve. "Very. It is as bad as it could be, my child," he answered. "Bad for Boston--bad for us all. I have been through this sort of calamity before; but that was many years ago. I did not mind it so much when I was a young man. It is different now." "But surely the city can survive it, can it not?" "Yes--the property loss, no doubt; and I am glad to say that very few lives have been lost. But it is a fearful catastrophe. The city is crippled--shaken to its very heart! Think of the hundreds of families driven into the streets, the businesses wrecked, the uncountable number of men left without employment, even if the fire cease at once!" A new idea had come to Helen. "What difference will it make to Silas Osgood and Company?" she asked, with some hesitation. "It won't injure your firm, will it?" "Oh, to a certain extent, temporarily, but nothing to be troubled about. Of course the local agent does not have to pay any part of his companies' losses. But--" he paused. "But what?" asked the girl.