lips, and, looking at one another, ragged and
scarified, burst into hoarse but indomitable laughter.

Two others made an attempt to follow, and would not be restrained. It
was noticed that parts of the lower ladder had been charring; and the
ladder-men were preparing to remove it to a less dangerous point, when
old General Trumble and young Jefferson Bareaud made a rush to mount it,
and were well upon their upward way before the ladder, weakened at the
middle, sagged, splintered, and broke, Trumble and Bareaud falling with
it. And there was the grappling-ladder, dangling forty feet above the
ground; and there were the five upon the roof.

The Department had no other ladder of more than half the length of the
shattered one. Not only the Department, but every soul in Rouen,
knew that; and there rose the thick, low sigh of a multitude, a sound
frightful to hear. It became a groan, then swelled into a deep cry of
alarm and lamentation.

And now, almost simultaneously, the west wall of the building, and
the south wall, and all the southwestern portions of the roof, covered
them-selves with voluminous mantles of flame, which increased so hugely
and with such savage rapidity that the one stream on the roof was seen
to be but a ridiculous and useless opposition.

Everybody began to shout advice to his neighbor; and nobody listened
even to himself. The firemen were in as great a turmoil as was the
crowd, while women covered their eyes. Young Frank Chenoweth was sobbing
curses upon the bruised and shaking Trumble and Jefferson Bareaud, who
could only stand remorseful, impotently groaning, and made no answer.

The walls of the southernmost warehouse followed the roof, crashing
inward one after the other, a sacrificial pyre with its purpose
consummated; and in the seeth and flare of its passing, Tom Vanrevel
again shaded his eyes with his hand, and looked down across the upturned
faces. The pedestal with the grotesque carvings was still there; but the
crowning figure had disappeared--the young goddess was gone. For she,
of all that throng, had an idea in her head, and, after screaming it
to every man within reach, only to discover the impossibility of making
herself understood in that Babel, she was struggling to make her way
toward the second warehouse, through the swaying jam of people. It was
a difficult task, as the farther in she managed to go, the denser became
the press and the more tightly she found the people wedged, u