?" asked Dora Maxwell.

"She was staying at Seaforth last June, and while she was there a
terrible fire broke out in the middle of the night at the house where
she was lodging. The people got safely on to the Promenade, and had
sent for the fire engines, when suddenly it was discovered that the
landlady's youngest little boy had been left asleep in the attic. The
flames were blazing out at the windows, and the hall was filled with
horrible, dense smoke. Nobody dared to go inside, and everybody said:
'Wait for the Brigade, and the proper fire-escape. One of the men will
fetch him.' But Aldred knew that every moment wasted might mean the loss
of the child's life. She ran and dipped her pocket-handkerchief in the
sea, and tied it over her mouth; then, without consulting anyone, she
dashed into the house, and crept on her hands and knees up the stairs.
She could just manage to breathe, but she reached the bedroom, and
groped her way to the crib where the little boy lay whimpering with
fright. He was only two years old, and luckily not very heavy, so she
took him in her arms and crawled down the stairs in the same way as she
had gone up, so as to get the purer air close to the floor. The people
nearly went wild with excitement as they saw her stumble out at the door
carrying the baby; and its mother was ready to worship her. The Brigade
was such a long time in arriving that the flames had gained a complete
hold before it came, and the attics were flaring like a bonfire. If
Aldred had not seized the opportunity, and gone the very moment she did,
the child would have been burnt to death! I believe it made a stir in
Seaforth at the time. The newspapers wanted to print her portrait, but
her father wouldn't allow it. He said 'his daughter had no wish for
notoriety, and did not desire any public recognition of an act she had
only been too happy to perform. She would be grateful if people would
kindly take no further notice of it.' Now, you see why I think so well
of Aldred! She's as brave as anyone in the _Book of Golden Deeds_, and
yet so modest about what she has done that she's content to let it be
quite forgotten."

"How did you hear, then?"

"I happened to mention in a letter to a cousin that we had a new girl at
The Grange, called Aldred Laurence; and Cousin Marion wrote back,
sending me a newspaper cutting that she had kept describing the fire,
and saying she was sure that was the name of the 'little heroine' whom
everyb