the devouring element, its pitiful cries were soon
hushed to silence for ever and ever, Amen!

At long and last, a woman's howl was heard on the street, lamenting, like
Hagar over young Ishmael in the wilderness of Beersheba, and crying that
her old grannie, that was a lameter, and had been bedridden for four
years come the Martinmas following, was burning to a cinder in the
fore-garret. My heart was like to burst within me when I heard this
dismal news, remembering that I myself had once an old mother, that was
now in the mools; so I brushed up the stair like a hatter, and burst open
the door of the fore-garret--for in the hurry I could not find the sneck,
and did not like to stand on ceremony. I could not see my finger before
me, and did not know my right hand from the left, for the smoke; but I
groped round and round, though the reek mostly cut my breath, and made me
cough at no allowance, till at last I catched hold of something cold and
clammy, which I gave a pull, not knowing what it was, but found out to be
the old wife's nose. I cried out as loud as I was able for the poor
creature to hoise herself up into my arms; but, receiving no answer, I
discovered in a moment that she was suffocated, the foul air having gone
down her wrong hause; and, though I had aye a terror at looking at, far
less handling a dead corpse, there was something brave within me at the
moment, my blood being up; so I caught hold of her by the shoulders, and
harling her with all my might out of her bed, got her lifted on my back
heads and thraws, in the manner of a boll of meal, and away as fast as my
legs could carry me.

There was a providence in this haste; for, ere I was half-way down the
stair, the floor fell with a thud like thunder; and such a combustion of
soot, stour, and sparks arose, as was never seen or heard tell of in the
memory of man since the day that Samson pulled over the pillars in the
house of dragon, and smoored all the mocking Philistines as flat as
flounders. For the space of a minute I was as blind as a beetle, and was
like to be choked for want of breath; however, as the dust began to clear
up, I saw an open window, and hallooed down to the crowd for the sake of
mercy to bring a ladder, to save the lives of two perishing
fellow-creatures, for now my own was also in imminent jeopardy. They
were long of coming, and I did not know what to do; so thinking that the
old wife, as she had not spoken, was maybe dead alrea