ng heat, wandering and crying out
deliriously.

"O what shall we do? We must have a doctor. She'll die!" cried Bel.

"If I dared to go up and call Mr. Sparrow?" said the spinster,
timidly.

Her thought reverted as instantly to Mr. Sparrow, and yet with the
same conscious shyness, as if she had been eighteen, and the poor
old watchmaker twenty-one. Because, you see, she was a woman; and
she had but been a woman the longer, and her woman's heart grown
tenderer and shyer, in its unlived life, that she was four and
fifty, and not eighteen. There are three times eighteen in four and
fifty.

"O, Mr. Sparrow isn't any good!" cried Bel, impetuously. "If you
wouldn't mind seeing whether Mr. Hewland is up-stairs?"

Miss Smalley did not mind that at all; and though numbly aggrieved
at the reflection upon Mr. Sparrow, went up and knocked.

Bel heard Morris Hewland's spring upon the floor, and his voice, as
he asked the matter. Heavy with fatigue, he had not roused till now.

As he came down, five minutes later, and Bel Bree met him at the
door, the gas suddenly went out, and they stood, except for the
flame outside, in darkness.

In house and street it was the same. Miss Smalley called out that it
was so. "The stable light is gone," she said. "Yes,--and the lights
down Tremont Street."

Then that fearful robe of fire, thick sown with spangling cinders,
seemed sweeping against the window panes.

Only that terrible light over all the town.

"O, what does it mean?" said Bel.

"It is Chicago over again," the young man answered her, with a grave
dismay in his voice.

"See there,--and there!" said Miss Smalley, at the window. "People
are up, lighting candles."

"But Aunt Blin is sick!" said Bel. "We must take care of her. What
shall we do?"

"I'll go and send a doctor; and I'll bring you news. Have you a
candle? Stop; I'll fetch you something."

He sprang up-stairs, and returned with a box of small wax tapers.
They were only a couple of inches long, and the size of her little
finger.

"I'll get you something better if I can; and don't be frightened."

The great glare, though it shed its light luridly upon all outside,
was not enough to find things by within. Bel took courage at this,
thinking the heart of it must still be far off. She gave one look
into the depth of the street, shadowed by its buildings, and having
a strange look of eerie gloom, even so little way beneath that upper
glow. Then she drew down the