"See how great a matter a little fire kindles," said Maverick. "But for McPherson's lecture here, I don't believe any of these things would have happened. It is a free country, of course, and a man has a right to air his ideas; but capital is not set firmly enough on its legs to stand a severe fire, and labor is in too great a superabundance. To seek to drain the ocean with a silver mug may be grand, but quite hopeless." One! The witching hour, and a few sleepy men began to yawn. "How odd it seems, not to hear trains in the night!" Maverick said presently. "A queer lock-out this." One, again. One, two, three: this time the fire-alarm. They rushed out toward the mill. Then they as suddenly wheeled around. In an instant the air seemed full of shouts and cries, and a broad sheet of flame flared up in the face of the tranquil heavens. A roar, like a mighty tramping of hosts, a crackling, snapping, sweeping sound. "It's Keppler's. Boyd's block will surely go!" The houses were frame, old and dry: Keppler's on the corner, the rest joined, like a row of sheds, and filled with the very poorest; a few apartments standing empty. The engines were out, but it was of little avail. The corner was just one brilliant sheet of lurid light. Shrieking women and children fled for their lives. The street swarmed again, and people trampled over one another in their wild terror. There was a crash, and the building fell in. The flames licked up the other fiery flood, and had a brave battle in the cellar. The engines played until the air was filled with smothering smoke, and there was nothing left but a long, blackened ruin. "It may be ungenerous to rejoice in any man's misfortune," said Maverick, "but in a sanitary point of view I am thankful those old rookeries have come to an end. Boyd wouldn't do any thing to them, and they were unfit for pigs to live in. And, as for Keppler's, there will be but one verdict this end of the town." Some one laid a hand on Jack Darcy's shoulder. He turned and saw Fred Lawrence. "They are all worried to death about you, old chap," began Fred. "Your mother, Miss Morgan, Sylvie,--and Irene is walking the floor. I have not seen her so excited since--since she had the fever. What a horrible thing! Was any one lost, do you know?" "They will not be able to tell that until morning, every thing is in such confusion. Pray God that the morning may dawn soon! I seem to have lived through years." The dawn came up by and by; first in faint opaline splendors, then scarlet and gold. The moon paled, and the stars dropped out, and there was a chirp of birds to welcome the new-born day. The shock of the fire cooled the temper of the raiders, for half the men were idle hangers-on, rather than absolute strikers. One frantic woman flew to the scene of devastation: her boy, four years old, was missing. They tried to comfort her with the thought that some neighbor had kindly taken him in, but she kept wildly imploring them to search.