of shavings in a blaze. But
it was a violet blaze. It was not like ordinary fire. It was more like
the thin blue waves that washed over the rocks of white asbestos in so
many of our tenants' grates. And like a wave it passed over the surface
of the floor, without eating into the wood.

There were no hangings in the room. The incendiary had relied entirely
on his woodwork, and within a minute the floor was a sea of violet
flames with red crests. There was one island. I had stooped after
Nettleton left me for the last time, and swept the shavings clear of me
on all sides, garnering as many as possible into the hole in the floor
where the trap had been set, and drying the floor within reach as well
as I could with the bare hand. There was this island, perhaps the size
of a hearth-rug; and I cannot say that I was ever any hotter than I
should have been on such a rug before a roaring fire.

But this fire did not roar, though it surged over the rest of the floor
in its blue billows and its red-hot crests, flowing under the
carpenter's bench as the sea flows under a pier. And the floor was not
on fire; the fire was on the floor; and it was dying down! It was dying
down before my starting eyes. Where the violet wave receded, it left
little more mark than the waves of the sea leave on the sands. It was
only the fiery crests that lingered, and crackled, and turned black and
my senses left me before I saw the reason, or more than the first
blinding ray of hope!

* * * * *

It was not Uvo Delavoye, and it was not Sarah, who was standing over me
when I awoke to the physical agony on which that of the mind had acted
lately as a perfect anodyne. It was the Delavoyes' doctor. Uvo had sent
for him in the middle of the night, telling his poor people he felt much
worse--having indeed a higher temperature--but being in reality only
unbearably anxious about Nettleton and me. He wanted to know what
Nettleton was doing. He wanted to be sure that I was safe in my bed. If
his sister had not been nursing him, he would have made a third madman
by crawling out to satisfy himself; as it was, he had sent for the
doctor and told him all. And the doctor had not only come himself, but
had knocked up his partner on the way, as they were both tenants on the
Estate.

They might have been utter strangers to me that night, and for a little
time after. Nor was it in accordance with their orders that I got to
know things