at his powerful, stupid son and began to
strike him in the face with his one good fist, shrieking, "Shut
up, you damn fool! Shut up!"

Dragging Etta and pushing Mrs. Brashear, Susan moved toward the
end of the hall where the fire escape passed their windows. All
the way down, the landings were littered with bedding, pots,
pans, drying clothes, fire wood, boxes, all manner of rubbish,
the overflow of the crowded little flats. Over these
obstructions and down the ladders were falling and stumbling
men, women, children, babies, in all degrees of nudity--for many
of the big families that slept in one room with windows tight
shut so that the stove heat would not escape and be wasted when
fuel was so dear, slept stark naked. Susan contrived to get
Etta and the old woman to the street; not far behind them came
Tom and Ashbel, the son's face bleeding from the blows his
father had struck to quiet him.

It was a penetrating cold night, with an icy drizzle falling.
The street was filled with engines, hose, all manner of ruined
household effects, firemen shouting, the tenement people
huddling this way and that, barefooted, nearly or quite naked,
silent, stupefied. Nobody had saved anything worth while. The
entire block was ablaze, was burning as if it had been saturated
with coal oil.

"The owner's done this," said old Tom. "I heard he was in
trouble. But though he's a church member and what they call a
philanthropist, I hardly thought he'd stoop to hirin' this
done. If anybody's caught, it'll be some fellow that don't know
who he did it for."

About a hundred families were homeless in the street. Half a
dozen patrol wagons and five ambulances were taking the people
away to shelter, women and babies first. It was an hour--an hour
of standing in the street, with bare feet on the ice, under the
ankle-deep slush--before old Tom and his wife got their turn to
be taken. Then Susan and Etta and Ashbel, escorted by a
policeman, set out for the station house. As they walked along,
someone called out to the policeman:

"Anybody killed at the fire, officer?"

"Six jumped and was smashed," replied the policeman. "I seen
three dead babies. But they won't know for several days how many
it'll total."

And all her life long, whenever Susan Lenox heard the clang of
a fire engine, there arose before her the memory picture of that
fire, in all the horror of detail. A fire bell to her meant
wretched families flung into th