to see him alive."

Miss Barbara! It was more familiar to Jasper, in a moment of excitement,
than the new name.

"You, Jasper! Is the house on fire--this house?"

"Well, I don't know, sir. I can hear a dreadful deal of screeching in
it."

Mr. Carlyle closed the window. He began to suspect that the danger lay
in fear alone. "Who told you there was fire?" he demanded of Wilson.

"That man ringing at the door," sobbed Wilson. "Thank goodness I have
saved the children!"

Mr. Carlyle felt somewhat exasperated at the mistake. His wife was
trembling from head to foot, her face of a deadly whiteness, and he
knew that she was not in a condition to be alarmed, necessarily or
unnecessarily. She clung to him in terror, asking if they _could_
escape.

"My darling, be calm! There's no fire; it's a stupid mistake. You may
all go back to bed and sleep in peace," he added to the rest, "and
the next time that you alarm the house in the night, Wilson, have the
goodness to make yourself sure, first of all, that there's cause for
it."

Barbara, frightened still, bewildered and uncertain, escaped to the
window and threw it open. But Mr. Carlyle was nearly as quick as she;
he caught her to him with one hand, and drew the window down with the
other. To have these tidings told to her abruptly would be worse than
all. By this time some of the servants had descended the other staircase
with a light, being in various stages of costume, and hastened to open
the hall-door. Jasper entered. The man had probably waited to help to
put out the "fire." Barbara caught sight of him ere Mr. Carlyle could
prevent it, and grew sick with fear, believing some ill had happened to
her mother.

Drawing her inside their chamber, he broke the news to her soothingly
and tenderly, making light of it.

She burst into tears. "You are not deceiving me, Archibald? Papa is not
dead?"

"Dead!" cheerfully echoed Mr. Carlyle, in the same tone he might have
used had Barbara wondered whether the justice was taking a night airing
for pleasure in a balloon. "Wilson has indeed frightened you, love.
Dress yourself, and we will go and see him."

At that moment Barbara recollected William. Strange that she should have
been the first to do so--before Lady Isabel--before Mr. Carlyle. She ran
out again to the corridors, where the boy stood shivering. "He may
have caught his death!" she uttered, snatching him up in her arms. "Oh,
Wilson! What have you done? His night-gown