ards
morning and slept on the floor for three hours. I have known harder
beds. I must go. I felt that I must look at you and order you to leave
at once."

"I don't want to leave the city."

"You must go. The fire will have taken this house before midnight. You
will be ordered out before that. They may save the city west of Van Ness
Avenue, for the mayor at last has consented that several blocks shall be
blown up at once. I am carrying dynamite. If I saw Russian Hill on fire
and was not sure that you were out of harm's way, it would unnerve me,
and I need all the nerve I've got."

"I can go down to Fort Mason."

"I want to know that you are out of the city. I think my mother is
better off where she is. She is working with a will down there and
absolutely refused to leave. I did not insist--no fire could cross those
sand-lots, and I fancy she needs occupation. But you must go."

"I should be as safe."

"Perhaps. But I should be beset by fears that you had ventured too far.
I can be quite impersonal, keen, steady of hand and brain, if you are
out of the city."

"Very well, I will go."

"The day the fire is over I will go for you and we will marry and live
in any shanty we can find--begin life together like any Forty-niners.
You can help others as much as you choose then. There will be work for
all--but now there is not, cannot be until organization begins. And I
must be free to take care of you. Will you go at once? The launch is
still there."

"Yes, I will go at once."

He left her, and a few moments later she was walking down the other side
of the hill, the voluminous pillow-case slung over her shoulder. Beside
her trudged Sugihara, the ancestors under one arm, and his library under
the other. The street along the water-front was a moving mass of
refugees from Telegraph Hill, and Mr. Clatt was standing in the launch,
on the alert. He gave a shout of delight as he saw Isabel, and she waved
her hand. As she reached the wharf and forced her way through the
Italians and Mexicans, who regarded her with no great favor, she noticed
a small party of Chinese evidently in distress. The woman, magnificently
arrayed, and hardly larger than a child, was huddled against the
sea-wall, dumbly protesting that she could go no farther. Her face was
twisted and her eyes were staring with pain and fright. A pretty child
in three shirts of different colors, all silken and embroidered, was
wailing in the common language of his ye