t across the window nearest
her machine. "Oh, you! You'll burn to a crisp at the roots! You'll
wither up an' die. You'll be dead an' brown an' ugly! An' I'm glad!
_Glad!_ For I hate you. _I hate you!_ Do you hear?" And she grasped a
handful of leaves that edged the window-sill, spat upon them, and
stamped them under her foot, then turned to look for Susie.

But Susie had fallen once more by her machine, leaving it unguarded
while it thrashed on uselessly. Her little pinched face looked up from
the dirty floor in pitiful unconsciousness amid the wild rush and whirl
of the fear-maddened company. If terror drove them they would pass over
her without knowing it. They were blind with desperation.

The room seemed about to burst with the heat. Timbers were cracking. All
the stories they had heard of the frailty of the building came now to
goad them as they hurtled from one end of their pen to the other, while
intermittent clouds of smoke and darting flames conspired to bewilder
their senses.

Katie sprang to seize her friend and draw her out of the path of the
stampede. As she lifted her a cry arose, like the wail of a lost world
facing the judgment. The floor swayed, the machines about seemed to
totter, and the floor above seemed bending down with some great weight.
There was a cracking, wrenching, twisting, as of the whole great
building in mortal pain, and just as Katie drew her unconscious friend
away to the window the floor above gave way and down crashed three awful
machines, like great devouring juggernauts, to crush and bear away
whatever came in their way.

After that, hell itself could scarcely have presented a more terrible
spectacle of writhing, tortured souls, pinned anguishing amid the
flames; of white faces below looking up to ghastly ones above that gazed
down with horror into the awful cavern, closed their eyes, clung to
walls and windows, and knew not what to do!

The fearful noise of machinery had suddenly ceased and been succeeded
by a calm in which the soft sound of rushing flames, the babble of the
crowd outside, the gong of fire-engines, and the cry of firemen seemed
balm of music in the ears. Water hissed on hot machinery and burning
walls. It splashed inside the window and on the white face of Susie. It
touched the hot hands of Katie as she lifted her friend nearer to the
blessed spray. A shadow of a ladder somewhere crossed the window.
Splintered glass fell all about her, and a hand reached in a