to extremes, and they were tuned to a severe
economy that might embrace more than water for some weeks to come.

Isabel sent a plate of sandwiches and a bottle of beer down to Mr.
Clatt, and the servant returned with the information that the faithful
wharfinger was sitting on a chair in front of the launch, a pistol on
his lap; and that already a small crowd was crouched like buzzards in
front of him. Isabel asked Victoria if she cared to retreat, but the
older woman shook her head.

"Do you?" she asked.

"Oh no. I shall remain until the last minute, certainly until I know
what Elton's plans are. If the launch is seized we can go down to Fort
Mason or out to the Presidio. Every one is in the same boat. I should
hate being too comfortable. But I don't think you should sleep
out-of-doors. It is always damp at night."

"I can stand as much as you can. I am quite fit again. And this is the
first time, for heaven knows how many years, that anything has
interested me. I shall stay till the last minute; and surely no fire
could climb this hill. Did I tell you that Mr. Trennahan came up at once
and asked me to go to Menlo Park with them? Ungrateful--but I have not
thought of it since."

Isabel announced her intention to take a nap. "No one knows what may
happen to-night," she said. "And I feel as if I had not slept for a
week."

She fell asleep at once. Lady Victoria awakened her by bursting
unceremoniously into her room.

"You must get up and look!" she cried. "The Palace Hotel and the other
big newspaper buildings are on fire. The sight is something awful--and
wonderful."

Isabel ran to the window. All the valley was a rolling sea of flame, and
all space seemed to be filled with enormous surging billows of smoke.
From every window of the Palace Hotel, an immense square building of
some seven stories, from the great newspaper buildings, and from other
brick and stone structures near by, tongues of flame were leaping; the
wooden buildings were mere shapeless furnaces. Again a volume of smoke
descended, and for the moment nothing was to be seen but a red blur
somewhere in the midst of rolling black.

Victoria communicated to Isabel the information she had received from
the neighbors, always coming and going. People were pouring out of the
city, not only by the Southern Pacific boats to Oakland, and indirectly
to Berkeley and Alameda, but by freight-boats and launches to the Marin
towns. They were obliged to make a lo