ood night," went out and down the stairs.

Lapham remained by the fire till he had smoked his cigar; then he rose
and stamped upon the embers that still burned with his heavy boots, and
went home. He was very cheerful at supper. He told his wife that he
guessed he had a sure thing of it now, and in another twenty-four hours
he should tell her just how. He made Penelope go to the theatre with
him, and when they came out, after the play, the night was so fine that
he said they must walk round by the new house and take a look at it in
the starlight. He said he had been there before he came home, and
tried Seymour's chimney in the music-room, and it worked like a charm.

As they drew near Beacon Street they were aware of unwonted stir and
tumult, and presently the still air transmitted a turmoil of sound,
through which a powerful and incessant throbbing made itself felt. The
sky had reddened above them, and turning the corner at the Public
Garden, they saw a black mass of people obstructing the perspective of
the brightly-lighted street, and out of this mass a half-dozen engines,
whose strong heart-beats had already reached them, sent up volumes of
fire-tinged smoke and steam from their funnels. Ladders were planted
against the facade of a building, from the roof of which a mass of
flame burnt smoothly upward, except where here and there it seemed to
pull contemptuously away from the heavy streams of water which the
firemen, clinging like great beetles to their ladders, poured in upon
it.

Lapham had no need to walk down through the crowd, gazing and
gossiping, with shouts and cries and hysterical laughter, before the
burning house, to make sure that it was his.

"I guess I done it, Pen," was all he said.

Among the people who were looking at it were a party who seemed to have
run out from dinner in some neighbouring house; the ladies were
fantastically wrapped up, as if they had flung on the first things they
could seize.

"Isn't it perfectly magnificent!" cried a pretty girl. "I wouldn't
have missed it on any account. Thank you so much, Mr. Symington, for
bringing us out!"

"Ah, I thought you'd like it," said this Mr. Symington, who must have
been the host; "and you can enjoy it without the least compunction,
Miss Delano, for I happen to know that the house belongs to a man who
could afford to burn one up for you once a year."

"Oh, do you think he would, if I came again?"

"I haven't the least doubt of