showing cold and gray, and Sarah coming in with
bundles of rescued garments, was Johnnie's mind free enough to unclasp
his hand, and show something fast held in it. 'Aunt Helen's cross,
mamma; I thought I might keep hold of it, because I was frightened.'

Her caresses lulled him at last to sleep, while she grieved at
Theodora's having gone in search of the cross. She knew of her safety
from Sarah, who reported that she had been working like any ten; but she
had not yet seen her, and the silence and suspense became oppressive.

Theodora had hardly spent a moment in seeking the cross, she tied on
Violet's bonnet over the hair falling round her, hurried to assist in
carrying the sick maid to a bed made up for her at the stables, and
then, missing the dumb page from among the servants, she rushed back
to look for him, dashed up the stairs through thick smoke, found him
asleep, and crossing a floor that almost burnt her foot, she shook
him awake, and saw him too in safety. She bethought her of her brother
John's possessions, now that the living were all secure; she hurried
into the work, she tore down his prints and pictures, carried them and
his books out,--desks, drawers, weights she would never have dreamt of
lifting, were as nothing to her. Many times did her father meet her,
exclaim and urge her to desist, and to go to Armstrong's; she said she
was just going: he went in one of the thousand directions in which he
was called at once, and presently again encountered her, where he least
expected it, coming out of a cloud of smoke with a huge pile of books
in her arms! On she worked, regardless of choking, blinding
smoke--regardless of the glare of flame--never driven from the field but
by a deluge from a fire-engine; when stumbling down-stairs, guided by
the banisters, she finally dismayed her father, who thought her long
ago in safety, by emerging from the house, dragging after her a
marble-topped chess table, when half the upper windows were flashing
with flame.

Then he locked her arm into his, and would not let her stir from his
side.

Water had been the great deficiency. Fire-engines were slow in coming,
and the supply from the fountains was as nothing, so that the attempt
had necessarily been to carry out property rather than to extinguish the
fire. Sarah, after coolly collecting all that belonged to her mistress
or the children, had taken the command of Miss Altisidora Standaloft,
(who usually regarded her as vu