der of falling buildings, the
maniacal shriek of the gale, the Niagara-like roar of the fire; and ever
and anon, striking through all the tumult, the deep, solemn voice of the
great court-house bell, and the one word it seemed to say to the
trembling city--"Doomed! doomed! doomed."

"We must go home," said Mrs. Lively in a lost, bewildered way.

"Yes," assented the doctor: "there is no safety this side the river. All
the engines in creation couldn't stop that fire. Why in God's name don't
they pull down houses or explode them? Come!"

But the lady continued to gaze in a fascinated way at the unearthly
spectacle. It was all so wild, so awful, that the brain reeled. The
doomed houses in the path of the fire seemed to her to be animate
things--dumb, helpless, feeling creatures, that trembled and shrank as
the flames reached out cruel fingers for them. She shook off the
bewildered, dazed feeling, but it came again as the tempest of flame and
smoke went racing to the north. Street and house and steeple and the
vast crowds seemed sailing away on some swift crescent river to a great,
vague, yawning blackness beyond.

They hurried down into the street. Momently the crowds, the tumult, the
terror were growing. Every house stood open, the interior as clear as at
noonday. Men, women and children were moving about in eager haste,
tearing up carpets, lifting furniture and loading trucks. Ruffians were
pushing in at the open doors, snatching valuables and insulting the
owners. There was a hasty seizing of goods, and a wild dash into the
street from imperiled houses, a shouting for trucks and carriages,
piteous inquiries for absent friends, distressed cries for absent
protectors, screams of little children, swift, wild faces pushing
eagerly in this direction and that; oaths and prayers and shoutings;
women bowed beneath mattresses and heavy furniture; wheels interlocking
in an inextricable mass; horses rearing and plunging in the midst of
women separated from their husbands and little children from their
mothers; men bearing away their sick and infirm and their clinging
little ones; the shower of falling brands, and the roar of the oncoming
flood of destruction.

In the next block but one to our doctor's home a brand had lodged in the
turret of a little wooden Catholic church, and, pinned there by the
fierce gale, was being blown and puffed at as with a blowpipe. There was
no time to lose. While he stopped on the street to secure