re, with his bottle of rum about half emptied, to finish his
night's entertainment after his own fashion.

Mrs. Tadman ventured a mild warning about the fire when she wished him
good night; but as she did not dare to hint that there had been any
neglect in the chimney-sweeping, her counsel went for very little. Mr.
Whitelaw threw on another pine-log directly the two women had left him,
and addressed himself to the consumption of a fresh glass of
rum-and-water.

"There's nothing like being on the safe side," he muttered to himself
with an air of profound wisdom. "I don't want to be laid up with the
rheumatics, if I can help it."

He finished the contents of his glass, and went softly out of the room,
carrying a candle with him. He was absent about ten minutes, and then
came back to resume his comfortable seat by the fire, and mixed himself
another glass of grog with the air of a man who was likely to finish the
bottle.

While he sat drinking in his slow sensual way, his young wife slept
peacefully enough in one of the rooms above him. Early rising and
industrious habits will bring sleep, even when the heart is hopeless and
the mind is weary. Mrs. Whitelaw slept a tranquil dreamless sleep
to-night, while Mrs. Tadman snored with a healthy regularity in a room on
the opposite side of the passage.

There was a faint glimmer of dawn in the sky, a cold wet dawn, when Ellen
was awakened suddenly by a sound that bewildered and alarmed her. It was
almost like the report of a pistol, she thought, as she sprang out of
bed, pale and trembling. It was not a pistol shot, however, only a
handful of gravel thrown sharply against her window.

"Stephen," she cried, half awake and very much, frightened, "what was
that?" But, to her surprise, she found that her husband was not in the
room.

While she sat on the edge of her bed hurrying some of her clothes on,
half mechanically, and wondering what that startling sound could have
been, a sudden glow of red light shone in at her window, and at the same
moment her senses, which had been only half awakened before, told her
that there was an atmosphere of smoke in the room.

She rushed to the door, forgetting that to open it was perhaps to admit
death, and flung it open. Yes, the passage was full of smoke, and there
was a strange crackling sound below.

There could be little doubt as to what had happened--the house was on
fire. She remembered how repeatedly Mrs. Tadman had declared tha