y could, and then "scaled
it" from window to window. Here it was that William Clark of Hook and
Ladder 7 made the rescues that gave him the Bennett medal--took three
women out of seventh-story windows when it was like climbing over
furnace mouths to get there. And one of these women he reached only by
working his way along narrow stone ledges for three windows, and back
the same way to his ladder with the woman on his shoulders. Even so it
is likely he would have failed in this last effort had not Edward Ford
come part way along the ledges to meet and help him.

Meantime Fireman Kennedy of Engine 23 had rescued an old lady from the
sixth floor; and Joseph Kratchovil of Hook and Ladder 2 had carried out
Mrs. Leland, wife of the proprietor, from deadly peril on the fifth
floor; and Frank Tissier of Hook and Ladder 4 had found a family named
Wells--father, mother, and daughter--in a blazing room, and borne them
out, with his own clothes burning, to the arms of Brennan and Sweeney,
who were waiting for him in a fury of fire at the top of the
eighty-five-foot extension ladder.

And Andrew Fitzgerald, also of Hook and Ladder 4, but off on sick-leave
with pneumonia, had shown the true fireman spirit as he came from the
doctors. His instructions were to go home and stay there. He was not on
duty at all. He was scarcely strong enough to be out of bed, but when he
heard that there were lives in peril down the avenue he forgot
everything, and ran to the place of danger. There was need of him here,
and, sick-leave or not, pneumonia or not, he would do what he could.
What he did was to carry out the last ones taken alive from the
ill-fated hotel--three women whom he bore in his arms from the fourth
floor through roaring hallways, then up a fire-escape, then back into
the building, with the flames singeing him, and a shattering blast of
exploding gas pursuing him, and finally out on a balcony whence, with
the help of Policeman Harrigan, he got them over safely to an adjoining
housetop. No wonder the Bonner medal was awarded him later for
conspicuous courage.

II

WHAT BILL BROWN DID IN THE GREAT TARRANT FIRE

THE great test for Fire-engine 29 and her crew, the test of life or
death that firemen wait years for (to see what stuff is in them), came
of a mild autumn afternoon, not soon to be forgotten by men who lunch
down City Hall way, by men who swarm in the stone hives of Chambers
Street and Greenwich Street and Washing