as if they
were two reeds.

"Jimmie! Save Jimmie!" she screamed in Henry's face. He plunged past
her and disappeared, taking the long-familiar routes among these upper
chambers, where he had once held office as a sort of second assistant
house-maid.

Hannigan had followed him up the stairs, and grappled the arm of the
maniacal woman there. His face was black with rage. "You must come
down," he bellowed.

She would only scream at him in reply: "Jimmie! Jimmie! Save Jimmie!"
But he dragged her forth while she babbled at him.

As they swung out into the open air a man ran across the lawn, and
seizing a shutter, pulled it from its hinges and flung it far out upon
the grass. Then he frantically attacked the other shutters one by one.
It was a kind of temporary insanity.

"Here, you," howled Hannigan, "hold Mrs. Trescott--And stop--"

The news had been telegraphed by a twist of the wrist of a neighbor
who had gone to the fire-box at the corner, and the time when Hannigan
and his charge struggled out of the house was the time when the
whistle roared its hoarse night call, smiting the crowd in the park,
causing the leader of the band, who was about to order the first
triumphal clang of a military march, to let his hand drop slowly to
his knees.

VII

Henry pawed awkwardly through the smoke in the upper halls. He had
attempted to guide himself by the walls, but they were too hot. The
paper was crimpling, and he expected at any moment to have a flame
burst from under his hands.

"Jimmie!"

He did not call very loud, as if in fear that the humming flames below
would overhear him.

"Jimmie! Oh, Jimmie!"

Stumbling and panting, he speedily reached the entrance to Jimmie's
room and flung open the door. The little chamber had no smoke in it at
all. It was faintly illuminated by a beautiful rosy light reflected
circuitously from the flames that were consuming the house. The boy
had apparently just been aroused by the noise. He sat in his bed, his
lips apart, his eyes wide, while upon his little white-robed figure
played caressingly the light from the fire. As the door flew open he
had before him this apparition of his pal, a terror-stricken negro,
all tousled and with wool scorching, who leaped upon him and bore him
up in a blanket as if the whole affair were a case of kidnapping by a
dreadful robber chief. Without waiting to go through the usual short
but complete process of wrinkling up his face, Jimmie let out