d.

The opening broadened, brightened; the sweet night-wind blew in; the
safe night-sky shone through. Sene's heart leaped within her. Out in the
wind and under the sky she should stand again, after all! Back in the
little kitchen, where the sun shone, and she could sing a song, there
would yet be a place for her. She worked her head from under the beam,
and raised herself upon her elbow.

At that moment she heard a cry:

"Fire! _fire!_ GOD ALMIGHTY HELP THEM,--THE RUINS ARE ON FIRE!"

A man working over the _debris_ from the outside had taken the
notion--it being rather dark just there--to carry a lantern with him.

"For God's sake," a voice cried from the crowd, "don't stay there with
that light!"

But before the words had died upon the air, it was the dreadful fate of
the man with the lantern to let it fall,--and it broke upon the ruined
mass.

That was at nine o'clock. What there was to see from then till morning
could never be told or forgotten.

A network twenty feet high, of rods and girders, of beams, pillars,
stairways, gearing, roofing, ceiling, walling; wrecks of looms, shafts,
twisters, pulleys, bobbins, mules, locked and interwoven; wrecks of
human creatures wedged in; a face that you know turned up at you from
some pit which twenty-four hours' hewing could not open; a voice that
you know crying after you from God knows where; a mass of long, fair
hair visible here, a foot there, three fingers of a hand over there; the
snow bright-red under foot; charred limbs and headless trunks tossed
about; strong men carrying covered things by you, at sight of which
other strong men have fainted; the little yellow jet that flared up, and
died in smoke, and flared again, leaped out, licked the cotton-bales,
tasted the oiled machinery, crunched the netted wood, danced on the
heaped-up stone, threw its cruel arms high into the night, roared for
joy at helpless firemen, and swallowed wreck, death, and life together
out of your sight,--the lurid thing stands alone in the gallery of
tragedy.

"Del," said Sene, presently, "I smell the smoke." And in a little while,
"How red it is growing away over there at the left!"

To lie here and watch the hideous redness crawling after her, springing
at her!--it had seemed greater than reason could bear, at first.

Now it did not trouble her. She grew a little faint, and her thoughts
wandered. She put her head down upon her arm, and shut her eyes.
Dreamily she heard them say