d of a
voice, so different from the preceeding ones that it fell like angelic
tones upon a world far beneath.

"My friends," said the voice, which was of course Nora Costello's,
"you have listened this night to stories of sin and suffering, of
struggle, of victory, and sometimes of defeat."

"Like the tipsy gent's," a man called out with a coarse laugh.

"Yes, like his. Would you jeer and gibe if you saw a man sinking in
the waves time after time in spite o' rafts and life-preservers thrown
out to him from the ship?"

A shamed silence showed that the question had struck; but the speaker
was not satisfied with silence. She went on driving the shaft home.
"Would you laugh if you saw a man trying to climb out of a burning
building and beaten back time after time by the flames?"

(Cries of "No, no.")

"Then why should you laugh over a poor wretch who is struggling with
worse flames and in danger of being dragged down to more terrible
fires of endless punishment?"

"Fire! Fire!" cried some one in the hall. For a moment Flint took this
to be like the "No, no" of a moment before,--only a running comment on
the speaker's words,--but at the same instant his eye caught the
curling of a thin blue line of smoke in the corner, and he remembered
the furniture and flimsy flummery stored on the lower floor. He
measured the distance to the door. There was no one between him and
it. He would have little difficulty in escaping if he started on the
instant--_but these others!_

"The place will go up like a rocket," he said to Brady, "but a panic
is worse. Hold the door with me!"

"Take me, meester; I'm stronger nor him!" said a broad-shouldered
coal-heaver, who had overheard their whisper.

With this the three men made a bolt for the door, and formed in line
in front of it, with their stout walking-sticks in hand.

"Keep your seats. We will knock down the first man who moves. There's
no danger!" Flint shouted. For an instant the crowd wavered. It would
have taken only one more impulse to turn it into a mob. Nora Costello
saw the danger, and seizing her tambourine she began on a ringing Army
chorus. The audience fell in with such energy that it drowned the
rattle of the fire engines.

"Don't be alarmed," said a fireman, sticking his head in at the door,
"the fire is out, and the danger over. Five minutes more, though," he
added in an undertone to Flint, "would have done the business, and
then, I reckon, we might have spent a