em all. People were wrapped against the keen November
cold, in whatsoever they could lay their hands on. A group of men
pacing back and forth before a pyramid of cases, had thrown great
soft white blankets about their shoulders, whose bright striped
borders hung fantastically about them, and whose corners fell and
dragged upon the muddy ground.

Down by Park Street corner, and at Winter Street, black columns of
coal smoke went up from the steamers; the hose, like monstrous
serpents, twisted and trailed along the pavements; water stood in
pools and flowed in runnels, everywhere.

They went down Winter Street, stepping over the hose-coils, and
across the leaking streams; they came to the crossing of Washington,
where yesterday throngs of women passed, shopping from stately store
to store.

Beyond, were smoke and ruin; swaying walls, heaps of fallen masonry,
chevaux-de-frises of bristling gas and water-pipes, broken and
protruding. A little way down, to the left, sheets of flame, golden
in the gray daylight, were pouring from the face of the beautiful
"Transcript" building.

They stood, fearful and watchful, under the broken granite walls
opposite Trinity Church.

Windows and doors were gone from the grand old edifice; inside, the
fire was shining; devouring at its dreadful ease, the sacred
architecture and furnishings that it had swept down to the ground.

"See! There he is!" whispered Miss Smalley to Mr. Sparrow, as she
gazed with unconscious tears falling fast down her pale old cheeks.

It was the Rector of Trinity, who thought to have stood this morning
in the holy place to speak to his people. Down the middle of the
street he came, and went up to the cumbered threshold and the open
arch, within which a terrible angel was speaking in his stead.

"Do you think he remembers now, what he said about the God of
Daniel, as he looks into the blazing fiery furnace?"

"I dare say he doesn't ever remember what he _said_; but he
remembers always what _is_," answered the watch-maker.

CHAPTER XXIII.

EVENING AND MORNING: THE SECOND DAY.

The strange, sad Sunday wore along.

The teams rolled on, incessantly, through the streets; the blaze and
smoke went up from the sixty acres of destruction; friends gathered
together and talked of the one thing, that talk as they might, would
not be put into any words. Men whose wealth had turned to ashes in a
night went to and fro in the same coats they had worn yesterday