By means of such a bridge all the inhabitants of the burning house were removed, and no one was more energetic in carrying the women and children across the dangerous planks than Archie Scott; for his mountain training had made such a feat one of no extraordinary danger to him. Satisfied at length that all life was out of risk, he was turning to go home, when a white, terrible face looked out of the top-most floor, showing itself amid the gusts of smoke like the dream of a corpse, and screaming for help in agonizing tones. Archie knew that face only too well. But he remembered, in the same instant, what his father had said in dying, and, swift as a mountain deer, he was quickly on the top floor of the opposite house again. In a few moments the planks bridged the distance between death and safety; but no entreaties could make the man risk the dangerous passage. Setting tight his lips, Archie went for the shrieking coward, and carried him into the opposite house. Then the saved man recognized his preserver. "Oh, Mr. Scott!" he said, "for God's sake, my wife and my child! The last of seven!" "You scoundrel! Do you mean to say you saved yourself before Katie and your child!" Archie did not wait for the answer; again he was at the window of the burning room. Too late! The flames were already devouring what the smoke had smothered; their wretched pallet was a funeral pyre. He had hardly time to save his own life. "They are dead, Semple!" Then the poor creature burst into a paroxysm of grief, moaned and cried, and begged a few shillings, and vowed he was the most miserable creature on earth. After this Archie Scott strove for two years to do without taint of selfishness what his father had begun twenty years before. But there was not much now left to work upon--health, honor, self-respect were all gone. Poor Semple was content to eat the bread of dependence, and then make boastful speeches of his former wealth and position. To tell of his wonderful schemes, and to abuse his luck and his false friends, and everything and everybody, but the real cause of his misfortune. Archie gave him some trifling post, with a salary sufficient for every decent want, and never heeded, though he knew Semple constantly spoke ill of him behind his back. However the trial of Archie's patience and promise did not last very long. It was a cold, snowy night in mid-winter that Archie was called upon to exercise for the last time his charity and forbearance toward him; and the parting scene paid for all. For, in the shadow of the grave, the poor, struggling soul dropped all pretences, acknowledged all its shortcomings, thanked the forbearance and charity which had been extended so many years, and humbly repented of its lost and wasted opportunities.