painted shades, and shut the sky
phantom out.

"Mr. Hewland will come and tell us," she said. "We must work."

She heated water and got a bath for Aunt Blin's feet. She put a
cool, wet bandage on her head. She mixed some mustard and spread a
cloth and laid it to her chest. Miss Bree breathed easier; but the
bandage upon her head dried as though the flame had touched it.

"I'll tell you what," said good, inopportune Miss Smalley; "she's
going to be dreadful sick, I'm afraid. It'll be head and lungs both.
That's what my sister had."

"_Don't_ tell me what!" cried Bel, irritatedly.

But the doctor told her what, when he came.

Not in words; doctors don't do that. But she read it in his grave
carefulness; she detected it in the orders which he gave. People
brought up in the country,--where neighbors take care of each other,
and where every symptom is talked over, and the history of every
fatal disorder turns into a tradition,--learn about sickness and the
meanings of it; on its ghastly and ominous side, at any rate.

Mr. Hewland came back and brought two candles, which he had with
difficulty procured from a hotel. He brought word, also, that the
fire was under control; that they need feel no more alarm.

And so this second night of peril and disaster passed painfully and
slowly by.

But on the Monday, the day in which Boston was like a city given
over into the hands of a host,--when its streets were like
slow-moving human glaciers, down the midst of which in a narrow
channel the heavier flow of burdened teams passed scarcely faster
forward than the hindered side streams,--Aunt Blin lay in the grasp
and scorch of a fire that feeds on life; wasting under that which
uplifts and frenzies, only to prostrate and destroy.

I shall not dwell upon it. It had to be told; the fire also had to
be told; for it happened, and could not be ignored. It happened,
intermingling with all these very things of which I write;
precipitating, changing, determining much.

Before the end of that first week, in which the stun and shock were
reacting in prompt, cheerful, benevolent organizing and
providing,--in which, through wonderful, dreamlike ruins, like the
ruins of the far-off past, people were wandering, amazed, seeing a
sudden torch laid right upon the heart and centre of a living
metropolis and turning it to a shadow and a decay,--in which human
interests and experiences came to mingle that had never consciously
approached each