There ensued a panic that baffled description. One impulse moved the whole excited, shrieking throng--they surged forward madly toward the doors and windows, bent on escape. They were like maniacs for the time. The weak fell down beneath the feet of the strong, and were heedlessly trampled, while groans and cries, sometimes mixed with curses, divided the shuddering air. Violet Earle had shrieked and fainted in the arms of her half-maddened brother. There was not one to avert the awful fate of her who a single moment before had held every heart enchained by the power of her beauty and genius. Yes, there was one--one only, it seemed. In an instant after the terrible flames had wrapped their fiery tongues around the slender form of the _prima donna_ a man sprang over the footlights upon the stage at one rapid bound from the parquette floor. He had caught up a heavy camel's-hair shawl, dropped by a lady in her hurried flight. Rushing forward, utterly heedless of the advancing flames that scorched his face and his hair, he threw the heavy shawl over the blazing form and smothered out the fire. Then, lifting the senseless girl in his arms, he made his way with the greatest difficulty to a door and forced his way through the striving mass of human beings out upon the thronged pavement. The _prima donna's_ carriage was waiting on the pavement, and Professor Larue, who had come with it a minute before, was darting frantically up and down ceaselessly around the doors of the doomed building. Afterward Professor Larue told how a tall man with a face so blackened with fire and soot as to be quite unrecognizable, had put Jaquelina into his arms and fallen fainting on the pavement. Someone had attended to him--he could not tell who--for he had been so distracted with grief and horror over the tragic fate of his ward he had not waited to see, but all inquiry afterward failed to discover the rescuer of the _prima donna_. No one had recognized him, no one knew where he went, or whence he came. Professor Larue in the gratitude of his heart wished to discover him and reward him generously, but his persistent inquiries through the personal column of the _Herald_ elicited no reply. The man was modest as well as brave. He did not wish to be known. Walter Earle had had a most terrible time getting his unconscious sister out of the building; his heart was distracted with grief over the tragic fate which had overtaken his darling. But for the encumbrance of his sister he would have rushed out in an attempt to reach Jaquelina through that struggling mass of maddened humanity. But Violet lay like an inert, helpless burden on his hands. It was only by superhuman efforts that he ever reached the outer world with her. Then when he had put her in a carriage, taken her home, and had seen her revive, he drove rapidly back to the theater. They told him there that a stranger had leaped upon the burning stage and smothered the flames that enveloped the _prima donna_.