n spite of
splintered hands and weary back, and soon the passageway was solidly walled
with closely fitted logs to the height of six feet. Above this, in the
arched part, Coquenil worked more slowly, selecting logs of such shape and
size as would fill the curve with the fewest number of cracks between them.
There was danger in cracks between the obstructing logs, for cracks meant a
draught, and a draught meant the spreading of the fire.

"Now," said M. Paul, surveying the blocked passageway, "that is the best we
can do--with wood. We must stop these cracks with something else. What did
you wear?" He glanced at the chair where Alice had thrown her things. "A
white cloak and a straw hat with a white veil and a black velvet ribbon.
Tear off the ribbon and--we can't stand on ceremony. Here are my coat and
vest. Rip them into strips and--Great God! There's the smoke now!"

As he spoke, a thin grayish feather curled out between two of the upper
logs and floated away, another came below it, then another, each widening
and strengthening as it came. Somewhere, perhaps in his sumptuous library,
De Heidelmann-Bruck had pressed an electric button and, under the logs
piled in the large chamber, deadly sparks had jumped in the waiting tinder;
the crisis had come, the fire was burning, they were prisoners in a huge,
slowly heating oven stacked with tons of dry wood.

"Hurry, my child," urged Coquenil, and working madly with a piece of stick
that he had wrenched from one of the logs, he met each feather of smoke
with a strip of cloth, stuffing the cracks with shreds of garments, with
Alice's veil and hat ribbon, with the lining of his coat, then with the
body of it, with the waist of her dress, with his socks, with her
stockings, and still the smoke came through.

"We _must_ stop this," he cried, and tearing the shirt from his shoulders,
he ripped it into fragments and wedged these tight between the logs. The
smoke seemed to come more slowly, but--it came.

"We must have more cloth," he said gravely. "It's our only chance, little
friend. I'll put out the candle! There! Let me have--whatever you can
and--be quick!"

Again he worked with frantic haste, stuffing in the last shreds and rags
that could be spared from their bodies, whenever a dull glow from the other
side revealed a crack in the barricade. For agonized moments there was no
sound in that tomblike chamber save Alice's quick breathing and the
shrieking tear of garments, an