l, and he began to feel his way along it. Presently
his fingers gripped the edge of a door-casing, and he staggered back as
a fresh burst of suffocating fumes caught his lungs with a smothering
clutch.

For an instant he stood there reeling. Then in a flash he remembered the
coat-room, remembered the narrow pair of stairs leading down from one
corner with a row of red fire-buckets on a bench beside it. These were
the buckets Ranny had come for. The door to the stairs was--open!

He caught his breath with a dry sob and plunged into the pitchy darkness
of the smaller room. Two steps he took--three. Then his foot struck
against something, and he fell forward over a body stretched out on
the floor, his out-thrust arms reaching beyond it.

For a moment he thought it was all over. His senses were swimming in
the clouds of deadly smoke pouring up from below, and it took an
appreciable second or two to realize that the thing one hand clutched
instinctively was the edge of an open door. Almost as instinctively he
summoned all his strength and flung it to. The resulting slam came as
something indistinct and far away. He wondered if he were losing
consciousness, and in the same breath his jaw squared with the stubborn
determination that he would not--he must not! As he reached up to tear
the wide handkerchief from about his neck his fingers brushed the
silver cross pinned to his left breast, and the touch seemed to give
him fresh courage.

With feverish haste he felt for Ranny's wrists, knotted the neckerchief
about them, and, drawing them over his head, began to crawl toward the
door. Too late he remembered the water in the buckets and wished he had
thought to dip a handkerchief in that to breathe through. Doubtless it
was that very idea which had brought Ranny himself here. But he did not
dare turn back, and after all, now that the stair door was closed, the
smoke did not seem quite so dense, especially down here on the floor.

He reached the door and crawled through, dragging his helpless burden
with him. Through the smoke the farther windows were vaguely outlined
against a flickering, reddish background. A brighter line of fire marked
the crack beneath the double doors. Under his body, too, the floor felt
hot, and he could sense a queer, uneven pulsation as if the boards were
moving. What if the flames should burst through before they could get
away? What if--

"Dale! Ranny! Where are you?"

It was the scoutmaster's vo