hit oot the means and the way?"

She had only just heard, and had run a mile to the rescue of her old lad.

The women caught her enthusiasm, and jeered and cheered formlessly, as
their manner is; for each desired for her own voice a separate
recognition.

Jenny pushed rudely past the abashed gaffer. She was hatless, and her
hair had tumbled abroad. She raised her face, with the eyes shining.

"Jack!" she cried, in a shrill voice--"Jack!"

The little weak response wailed down again.

"Jenny! I'm anigh done."

"Hold on a bit longer, Jack!" she screamed. "Don't move till I tell 'ee.
I'm agone to save thee, Jack!"

Again from the women a rapturous cry broke out. What incompetent noodles
appeared their masters in juxtaposition with this fearless, defiant
creature.

The man up aloft seemed to shiver in the shock of the outcry; and once
more some fragments of mortar rolled from under his feet and bounded into
the depths. The girl rounded upon the voicers.

"Hold thee blazing tongues!" she cried in fury. "D'ee warnt to shake un
from his perch?"

She turned to the foremost group of men.

"A couple o' long scaffold poles fro' yonder!" she cried hurriedly, "and
twenty fathom o' rope!"

Her quick eyes and intelligence had found what she wanted in a builder's
yard no great distance away.

"Follow, a dozen o' you!" she cried; and sped off in the direction she
had indicated.

Just twelve men, and no more, obeyed her. She was mistress of the
situation, and the crowd felt it. They made room for the dominant
intellect, and awaited developments, watching, in suppressed excitement
and trepidation, the figure--whom exhaustion was slowly mastering--high
up above them.

Suddenly a sort of huge L-shaped structure moved down the street, until
it stood opposite the ruined house. Then, twisting and rearing itself
aloft, it took to itself the form of a lofty, slender gallows.

It was formed of a couple of forty-foot scaffolding poles, stoutly bound
and corded together, the base of one to the top of the other, so that
they stood at right angles. Five or six feet of the butt of the
horizontal one was projected beyond its lashings, and to this three
lengths of rope were fastened, and trailed long ends in the dust as the
structure was held aloft and pushed and dragged into position.

"Now!" shrieked the girl, red-hot, reliant, never still for a moment; "as
marny as can hold to each end there, and swing the blessed boom out
towa