h _beyond_ the moment when death says to all sense
and all being--"Thus far and no farther!"--

Just then a stir, pregnant with omen, rustled behind the scenes--feet
ran, voices spoke. What was it? demanded the whole house. A flame, a
smell of smoke replied.

"Fire!" rang through the gallery. "Fire!" was repeated, re-echoed,
yelled forth: and then, and faster than pen can set it down, came
panic, rushing, crushing--a blind, selfish, cruel chaos.

And Dr. John? Reader, I see him yet, with his look of comely courage
and cordial calm.

"Lucy will sit still, I know," said he, glancing down at me with the
same serene goodness, the same repose of firmness that I have seen in
him when sitting at his side amid the secure peace of his mother's
hearth. Yes, thus adjured, I think I would have sat still under a
rocking crag: but, indeed, to sit still in actual circumstances was my
instinct; and at the price of my very life, I would not have moved to
give him trouble, thwart his will, or make demands on his attention. We
were in the stalls, and for a few minutes there was a most terrible,
ruthless pressure about us.

"How terrified are the women!" said he; "but if the men were not almost
equally so, order might be maintained. This is a sorry scene: I see
fifty selfish brutes at this moment, each of whom, if I were near, I
could conscientiously knock down. I see some women braver than some
men. There is one yonder--Good God!"

While Graham was speaking, a young girl who had been very quietly and
steadily clinging to a gentleman before us, was suddenly struck from
her protector's arms by a big, butcherly intruder, and hurled under the
feet of the crowd. Scarce two seconds lasted her disappearance. Graham
rushed forwards; he and the gentleman, a powerful man though
grey-haired, united their strength to thrust back the throng; her head
and long hair fell back over his shoulder: she seemed unconscious.

"Trust her with me; I am a medical man," said Dr. John.

"If you have no lady with you, be it so," was the answer. "Hold her,
and I will force a passage: we must get her to the air."

"I have a lady," said Graham; "but she will be neither hindrance nor
incumbrance."

He summoned me with his eye: we were separated. Resolute, however, to
rejoin him, I penetrated the living barrier, creeping under where I
could not get between or over.

"Fasten on me, and don't leave go," he said; and I obeyed him.

Our pioneer proved strong a