Patty was so nearly congealed that she climbed into her husband’s lap and gathered his arms about her like the ends of a shawl. It had been a long while since she had paid his bosom such a visit and he was grateful for the cold. And then the great bell spoke in the City Hall tower—spoke one huge resounding awful word, “Fire!” before it broke into a baying as of infernal hounds. When RoBards started to evict Patty from his lap she gasped: “You’re not going out on such a night?” RoBards groaned: “I’ve got to!” He set her aside and ran upstairs for the basket of armor, and Patty followed him wailing with pity. “Don’t go, darling!” she pleaded. “You can tell them to-morrow that you were sick. You’ll die if you go out in this hideous cold, and then what will become of me? Of us? Of our babies?” Her solicitude heartened him. He was important to her after all! His death would grieve her. That added a beauty to duty. But it took away none of its authority. While he struggled into his boots, she ran to a window looking south and drew back the curtains. Through the thick lace of frost on the panes a crimson radiance pierced, imbuing the air with a rosy mist as if the town were seen through an upheld glass of Madeira. “It looks like the end of the world!” Patty screamed. “What will become of our beautiful city now? It will be nothing but ashes to-morrow. Don’t go! You’ll be buried under a wall, or frozen to death in the streets. If you’ll promise not to go down into that furnace, I’ll go with you to-morrow to Tuliptree Farm, and never leave it again!” His heart ached for her in her agitation, and it was not easy to tear off the clinging hands for whose touch he had so often prayed. But he broke free and dashed, helmeted and shod, into the icy world between him and the advancing hell. The fire’s ancient enemy, water, was not at hand for the battle, and the whole city lay helpless. At the firehouse door RoBards met Harry Chalender. He was dressed for the ball that Patty had planned to attend, and he wore white gloves and dancing pumps. CHAPTER VI It was like Harry Chalender to wear dancing pumps to a fire on a midwinter night. “Harry will have ’em on Judgment Day,” said one of the other members of the fire company, and they laughed at him through chattering teeth. This did not amuse RoBards. He wanted to hate Chalender; but justice was his foible, and he had to confess to his own prejudice that, while it was Chalenderish to appear in pumps at a fire, it was equally like him to be absent from no heroic occasion no matter what his garb. Harry played the fool, perhaps, but he was always at King Lear’s side. And though he never forgot his bauble, it tinkled and grinned wherever there was drama. And there promised to be drama enough this night.