Once more the fear of doom fell upon the city, but after three hundred and sixty-five of the city’s most important buildings were piled in embers, the Croton came to the rescue. Once more the heart of the city’s commerce was eaten out. Again the insurance companies went bankrupt in the hour they had assumed to provide against. Once more financial dismay shook the stout frame of the town. Yet carpenters and masons were at work before the ruins ceased to smoke, though they had to wear gloves to protect them from brick and stone too hot to be touched with naked hands. When RoBards came home after the fire, Patty was still blessedly asleep. She woke with a little cry of petulance when his helmet fell from his bruised hand as he lifted it from his bleeding forehead and dropped sickly into a chair. But when she saw how hurt he was, she was at his side in an instant, hurrying like a slipperless Oceanid to comfort him. The battered hero’s wounds were made worth while when they brought the delicate ministrations of the barefoot nymph in the flying white gown, so thin that it seemed to blush wherever it touched the flesh beneath. Patty looked all the bonnier for the panic that left her nightcap askew upon the array of curl papers bordering her anxious brow. And the fire had another benefit. It brought to old Jessamine the first grin of genuine contentment RoBards had seen on his twisted lips since 1835. For the old wretch chuckled to realize that many a wealthy merchant whose carriage dust he had had to take afoot for ten years was now brought down to his own miserable level. If only he could drag his two hundred thousand out of the city, he that had been poor among the rich, would be rich among the poor. That would be repayment with usury. He could hardly endure to await the day when he should regain his glory, and he smothered Patty when she brought home the inspiration that promised to hasten his triumph. She brought it home from a party, from a dinner so fashionable that it was not begun until seven o’clock. In only a few years the correct hour had been shoved further and further down the day from three o’clock in the afternoon until deep into the evening. At the same time the fashionable residence district had pushed out into the country until it was necessary for the RoBards’ hired carriage to travel for this occasion out Hudson Street for two miles to Ninth Avenue and nearly a mile more to Twenty-eighth Street. And Patty laughed into his ear: “It’s nice to be bound for the North Pole on so hot a night.” She was blissful as a new queen in her peculiarly lustrous dress of peach-blossom silk.