anyone in the house, Gautry?"

Gautry was speechless with drink. He threw his hands up in the air
with a gesture of maudlin despair, and shouted something which no one
understood. The crowd gathered like magic in the wide street before the
house--the one wide street in Manitou--from the roof and upper windows
of which flames were bursting. Far up the street was heard the noisy
approach of the fire-engine, which now would be able to do little more
than save adjoining buildings. Gautry, reeling, mumbling and whining,
gestured and wept.

A man shook him roughly by the shoulder. "Brace up, get steady, you
damned old geezer! Is there any body in the house? Do you hear? Is there
anybody in the house?" he roared.

Madame Thibadeau, who had dragged herself from her bed, was now at the
window of the house opposite. Seeing Fleda Druse passing beneath, she
called to her.

"Ma'mselle, Felix Marchand is in Gautry's house--drunk!" she cried.
"He'll burn to death--but yes, burn to death."

In agitation Fleda hastened to where the stranger stood shaking old
Gautry.

"There's a man asleep inside the house," she said to the stranger, and
then all at once she realized who he was. It was Dennis Doane, whose
wife was staying in Gabriel Druse's home: it was the husband of
Marchand's victim.

"A man in there, is there?" exclaimed Dennis. "Well, he's got to be
saved." He made a rush for the door. Men called to him to come back,
that the roof would fall in. In the smoking doorway he looked back.
"What floor?" he shouted.

From the window opposite, her fat old face lighted by the blazing roof,
Madame Thibadeau called out, "Second floor! It's the second floor!"

In an instant Dennis was lost in the smoke and flame.

One, two, three minutes passed. A fire-engine arrived; in a moment the
hose was paid out to the river near by, and as a fireman seized the
nozzle to train the water upon the building the roof fell in with a
crash. At that instant Dennis stumbled out of the house, blind with
smoke, his clothes aflame, carrying a man in his arms. A score of hands
caught them, coats smothered Dennis's burning clothes, and the man he
had rescued was carried across the street and laid upon the pavement.

"Great glory, it's Marchand! It's Felix Marchand!" someone shouted.

"Is he dead?" asked another.

"Dead drunk," was the comment of Osterhaut, who had helped to carry him
across the street.

At that moment Ingolby appeared on the scene. "