Keith was mighty proud of his father in his fireman’s uniform. But when RoBards seized Immy, tossed her aloft and brought her down to the level of his lips, she was as wildly afraid as Hector’s child had been of him in his great helmet. Immy was easily frightened now. Her scream pierced the air, and she almost had a fit, squirming in her father’s arms and kicking him in the breast as he turned her over to Patty, who received her, wondering like another Andromache. “What’s the matter? what on earth?” Patty cried. And Immy sobbed: “I thought Papa was Jud Lasher.” “What a funny thought! Why should you——” Patty’s father called to her opportunely, demanding with senile querulousness, who had hidden his walking stick and where. RoBards forgave the old man much for playing providence this once. As Patty turned aside, Keith seized Immy’s foot and warned her to “keep still for heavem’s sakes.” She understood; her eyes widened and she pleaded with her father to forgive her. He was as afraid of her penitence as of her terror; but somehow in the flurry of leaving the house, Patty forgot her curiosity, and the incident passed over. The loyalty of Keith and his quick rally to his father’s protection from Immy’s indiscretion touched RoBards deeply. The boy had evidently inherited the family love of secrecy for the family’s sake. But RoBards was sick with fear, realizing on what slender threads the secret hung. He dreaded to leave the children with their mother, lest they let slip some new clue to the agony he loved Patty too well to share with her. But he had to take his place with his fire company, though the sky fell in his absence. CHAPTER XXIV That procession was seven miles long, and everyone who marched or rode, and each of the massed spectators had his or her terror of life at the back of the heart. But RoBards knew only his own anxiety. The Fire Kings had left their engine house by the time he reached the place and he had to search for them in the welter of humanity. The Battery was the point from which the parade was to start and every street within two miles of it was filled with men and horses and mobs of impatient people already footsore with standing about on the sharp cobblestones.