uld have died in the fire had not one of the
servants caught her in time and dragged her back outside through the
open door. She quickly slipped through the man's grasp, and without
uttering a cry started around the house for the servants' entrance.
Archie came stumbling into the light, half dressed in his evening
clothes, struggling to put an arm into one of the sleeves of his coat.
She cried,--

"The boy--the boy--save him!"

One glance at Archie's nerveless, vacant face was enough. There was no
help to be had in him!

"Dell--where is he?" Archie called, still fumbling for the lost sleeve.
But she had disappeared.

At the servants' door some men were pounding and shouting. The door was
locked and bolted and stood fast. Adelle threw herself against it,
pounding with her fists; then, as if divining its unyielding strength,
she sped on around the corner of the house to the open terrace. There a
number of the servants and helpers on the estate were running to and fro
shouting and calling for help. Already the fire gleamed through the
house from the front and the wind lifted great plumes of flame against
the dark hillside, painting the tall eucalyptus trees fantastically. The
fire, starting evidently in the central part of the house which
contained the drawing-room, had shot first up the broad staircase and
was now eating its way through the second floor and reaching across to
the farther wing that hung directly above the canon. More and more
persons arrived while Adelle ran up and down the terrace, like a hunted
animal, moaning--"Boy! Boy!" There was talk of ladders, which had been
left by the workmen at the garage half a mile away. Before these could
be got or the hose attached to the fireplugs, the flame had swirled out
from the lonely wing where the child and his nurse slept. Even if the
ladders came, they would be of no use over the deep pit of the canon,
and the center of the house was now a roaring furnace. Adelle clung to
the rough rock of her great wall--the supporting wall to this part of
her house--the wall she had watched with such interest, such admiration
for its size and strength. It reached away from her slight, white figure
down into the gloom of the canon, and upon it rested the burning house.
While she clung there dry-eyed, moaning, she was conscious of Archie's
attempt to pull her back. He was the same bewildered figure, collarless,
in evening clothes--the same feeble, useless man, failing her at th