ey had ever
dared,--wondered that there had ever been anything but fear and
burning, in this great, crowded city.

The guards paced the streets; the roll of wagons quieted. The
stricken town was like a fever patient seized yesterday with a
sudden, devouring rage of agony,--to-day, calmed, put under care, a
rule established, watchers set.

Miss Smalley went from window to window as the darkness--and the
apparition of flame--came on. Rested by the day's surrender to
exhaustion, she was alert and apprehensive and excited now.

"It will be sure to burst out again," she said; "it always does."

"Don't say so to Aunt Blin," whispered Bel. "Look at her cheeks, and
her eyes. She is sick-abed this minute, and she _will_ keep up!"

At nine o'clock, the very last thing, she spoke with the
music-mistress again, at the door. Miss Smalley kept coming up into
the passage to look out at that end window.

"I don't mean to get up if it does burn," Bel said, resolutely. "It
won't come here. We ought to sleep. That's our business. There'll be
enough to do, maybe, afterwards."

But for all that, in the dead of the night, she was roused again.

A sound of bells; a long alarm of which she lost the count; a great
explosion. Then that horrible cataract of flame and sparks
overhanging the stars as it did before, and paling them out.

It seemed as if it had always been so; as if there had never been a
still, dark heaven under which to lie down tranquilly and sleep.

"The wind has changed, and the fire is awful, and I can't help it,"
sounded Miss Smalley's voice, meek and deprecating, through the
keyhole, at which she had listened till she had heard Bel moving.

Bel lit the gas, and then went out into the passage.

Flakes of fire were coming down over the roofs into the Place
itself.

The great rush and blaze were all this way, now. They were right
under the storm of it.

Aunt Blin woke up.

"What is it?" she asked, excitedly. "Is it begun again? Is it
coming?" And before Bel could stop her, she was out on the entry
floor with her bare feet.

A floating cinder fell and struck the sash.

"We must be dressed! We must pack up! Make haste, Bel! Where's
Bartholomew?"

Making a movement, hurriedly, to go back across her own room, Miss
Bree turned faint and giddy, and fell headlong.

They got her into bed again, and brought her to. But with
circulation and consciousness, came the rush of fever. In half an
hour she was in a burni