nge that started the home trip.

It was only a little after midnight that night when Julie, lying
wakeful in the sultry summer darkness, was startled by a person in her
room.

"It's Emma, Miss Ives," said Mrs. Arbuthnot's maid, stumbling about,
"Mrs. Arbuthnot wants you."

"She's ill!" Julie felt rather than said the words, instantly alert and
alarmed, and reaching for her wrapper and slippers.

"No, ma'am. But the doctor feels like he ought to go down to the fire,
and she's nervous--"

"The fire?"

"Yes'm," said Emma, simply, "the windmill is afire!"

"And I sleeping through it all!" Miss Ives was still bewildered,
fastening the sash of her cobwebby black Mandarin robe as she followed
Emma through the passage that joined her suite to the Arbuthnots'.

"Ann, dear--Emma tells me the laundry's on fire?" said she, entering
the big room. "I had no idea of it!"

"Nor had we," the doctor's wife rejoined eagerly. "The first we knew
was from Emma. Jim says there's no danger. Do you think there is?"

"Certainly not, Ann!" Julie laughed. "I'll tell you what we can do,"
she added briskly. "We'll wheel you down the hall here to the window;
you can get a splendid view of the whole thing."

The doctor approving, the ladies took up their station at a wide hall
window that commanded the whole scene.

Outside the velvet blackness and silence of the night were shattered.
The great mill, ugly tongues of flame bursting from the door and
windows at its base, was the centre of a talking, shouting,
shrill-voiced crowd that was momentarily, in the mysterious fashion of
crowds, gathering size.

"Wonderful sight, isn't it, Ann?"

"Wonderful. Does this cut off our water supply, Emma?"

"No, Mrs. Arbuthnot. They're using the little mill for the engines now."

"What did they use the big mill for, Emma?"

"The laundry, Miss Ives. And there's a sort of flat on the second floor
where the laundry woman and her husband--he's the man that drives the
'bus--live."

"Good heavens!" said Ann. "I hope they got out!"

"Oh, sure," said the maid, comfortably. "It was all of an hour ago the
fire started. They had lots of time."

The three watched for a while in silence. Ann's eyes began to droop
from the bright monotony of the flames.

"I believe I'll wait until the tank falls, Ju? and then go back to my
comfortable bed--Julie, what is it--!"

Her voice rose, keen with terror. The actress, her hand on her heart,
shook her head without