fellows to risk their lives
to--"

"Noble fellows!" shouted Miss Deemas, with flashing eyes, "d'you call it
noble to pull me out of bed, and roll me in a blanket and shoot me down
a--a--I don't know what, like a sack of coals? Noble fellows, indeed!
Brutes!"

Here Miss Deemas clasped her hands above her head in a passion of
conflicting feelings, and, being unable to find words for utterance,
burst into a flood of tears, dropped into a chair, and covered her face
with both hands.

"Dear, dear, _darling_ Julia!" said Miss Tippet soothingly.

"Don't speak to me!" sobbed the Eagle passionately, and stamping her
foot; "I can't bear to think of it."

"But you know, dear," persevered her friend, "they could not help
being--being--what d'you call it?--energetic, you know, for it was not
rough. We should all have been roasted to death but for them, and I
feel very, _very_ grateful to them. I shall respect that policeman as
long as I live."

"Ah, sure an' he _is_ a dacent boy now," said Matty Merryon, who entered
the room just then; "the way he lifted you an' Miss Emma up an' flung ye
over his showlder, as aisy as if ye was two bolsters, was beautiful to
look at; indade it was. Shure it remimbered me o' the purty pottery ye
was readin' just the other night, as was writ by O'Dood or O'Hood--"

"Hood," suggested Miss Tippet.

"P'r'aps it was," said Matty; "he'd be none the worse of an O before his
name anyhow. But the pottery begood with--`Take her up tinderly, lift
her with care,' if I don't misremimber."

"_Will_ you hold your tongue!" cried the Eagle, looking up suddenly and
drying her eyes.

"Surely, miss," said Matty, with a toss of her head; "anything to plaize
ye."

It is due to Matty to say that, while the policeman was descending the
ladder with her mistress, she had faithfully remained to comfort and
encourage Emma; and after Emma was rescued she had quietly descended the
ladder without assistance, having previously found time to clothe
herself in something a little more ample and appropriate than a bolster.

But where was David Boone all this time? Rather say, where was he not?
Everywhere by turns, and nowhere long, was David to be seen, in the
frenzy of his excitement. Conscience-smitten, for what he had done, or
rather intended to do, he ran wildly about, making the most desperate
efforts to extinguish the fire.

No one knows what he can do till he is tried. That is a proverb (at
least if it