profound quiet that had descended on the city: only a few
weak but steady lights in windows here and there told of their
existence.

Among the sleepless, on that calm dark night, there was one man to whom
we draw attention. His bronzed cheeks and tall muscular frame told that
he was not one of the wakeful sick, neither was he a sick-nurse, to
judge from things around him. He sat with his elbows on his knees and
his hands clasped, gazing into the fire and meditating--perhaps building
castles in the flames. His eyebrows were very bushy and his looks
stern, but there was a play of gentle, kindly feeling round his mouth.
He was one of a gallant band of picked men whose duty it is to do battle
with the flames, a member of the London Fire-brigade. Two other men
like himself lay on two little iron beds sound asleep with their clothes
on. There was this difference between them, however, that the wakeful
man wore brass epaulettes on his shoulders. Brass helmets and axes hung
round the room. A row of boots hung in a rack, a little telegraph
instrument stood on a table near a map of London, and a small but
sociable clock ticked on the wall.

That clock had quite a lively, cheerful tick. It seemed to talk to the
fireman with the bushy brows until he smiled and looked at it.

"Tic--tic--tic!" said the man, "how low and gentle your voice seems
to-night. Everything is so still and quiet, that you appear to be only
whispering the flight of time."

"Tic--tic--tic," replied the clock.

But the fireman heard no more, for just then a faint, far-distant sound
broke upon his ear. It drew near, like a rushing wind. Then like the
noise of hurrying feet. The man rose and nudged one of the sleepers,
who sat up and listened, after which he got up quickly, reached down his
helmet, and awoke his companion, while the first fireman went to the
station door. Some one ran against it with fearful violence as he laid
his hand on the lock, and the alarm-bell rang a tremendous peal as he
threw it open.

"Fire!" yelled a man who seemed all eyes and hair.

"Just so; where is it?" replied the fireman, calmly glancing at the
clock.

"Fire!" again yelled the man of eyes and hair, who was for the moment
mad with excitement.

"You've said that twice; where _is_ it?" said the fireman, seizing the
man by his arm, while the two men, who had been asleep, slipped out like
fleet but quiet ghosts. One called up the sleeping firemen, the other