ter class--master of slaves."

Susan nodded understandingly.

"Now, how can these little storekeepers like me get together
enough to begin to hire slaves? By a hundred tricks, every one
of them wicked and mean. By skimpin' and slavin' themselves and
their families, by sellin' short weight, by sellin' rotten food,
by sellin' poison, by burnin' to get the insurance. And, at
last, if they don't die or get caught and jailed, they get
together the money to branch out and hire help, and begin to get
prosperous out of the blood of their help. These here arson
fellows--they're on the first rung of the ladder of success. You
heard about that beautiful ladder in Sunday school, didn't you?"

"Yes," said Susan, "that and a great many other lies about God
and man."

Susan had all along had great difficulty in getting sleep
because of the incessant and discordant noises of the district.
The unhappy people added to their own misery by disturbing each
other's rest--and no small part of the bad health everywhere
prevailing was due to this inability of anybody to get proper
sleep because somebody was always singing or quarreling,
shouting or stamping about. But Susan, being young and as yet
untroubled by the indigestion that openly or secretly preyed
upon everyone else, did at last grow somewhat used to noise, did
contrive to get five or six hours of broken sleep. With the
epidemic of fires she was once more restless and wakeful. Every
day came news of fire somewhere in the tenement districts of the
city, with one or more, perhaps a dozen, roasted to death, or
horribly burned. A few weeks, however, and even that peril
became so familiar that she slept like the rest. There were too
many actualities of discomfort, of misery, to harass her all day
long every time her mind wandered from her work.

One night she was awakened by a scream. She leaped from bed to
find the room filling with smoke and the street bright as day,
but with a flickering evil light. Etta was screaming, Ashbel was
bawling and roaring like a tortured bull. Susan, completely
dazed by the uproar, seized Etta and dragged her into the hall.
There were Mr. and Mrs. Brashear, he in his nightdress of
drawers and undershirt, she in the short flannel petticoat and
sacque in which she always slept. Ashbel burst out of his room,
kicking the door down instead of turning the knob.

"Lorny," cried old Tom, "you take mother and Etta to the
escape." And he rushed