occupants rushed from their beds half dressed to the
courtyard, only to see, as they afterwards averred, the flames burst
like cannon discharges from the upper windows and unite above the
crackling roof. So sudden and complete was the catastrophe, although
slowly prepared by a leak in the overheated chimney between the floors,
that even the excitement of fear and exertion was spared the survivors.
There was bewilderment and stupor, but neither uproar nor confusion.
People found themselves wandering in the woods, half awake and half
dressed, having descended from the balconies and leaped from the
windows,--they knew not how. Others on the upper floor neither awoke nor
moved from their beds, but were suffocated without a cry. From the first
an instinctive idea of the hopelessness of combating the conflagration
possessed them all; to a blind, automatic feeling to flee the building
was added the slow mechanism of the somnambulist; delicate women walked
speechlessly, but securely, along ledges and roofs from which they
would have fallen by the mere light of reason and of day. There was no
crowding or impeding haste in their dumb exodus. It was only when Mrs.
Barker awoke disheveled in the courtyard, and with an hysterical outcry
rushed back into the hotel, that there was any sign of panic.

Mrs. Horncastle, who was standing near, fully dressed as from some
night-long vigil, quickly followed her. The half-frantic woman was
making directly for her own apartments, whose windows those in
the courtyard could see were already belching smoke. Suddenly Mrs.
Horncastle stopped with a bitter cry and clasped her forehead. It had
just flashed upon her that Mrs. Barker had told her only a few hours
before that Sta had been removed with the nurse to the UPPER FLOOR! It
was not the forgotten child that Mrs. Barker was returning for, but her
diamonds! Mrs. Horncastle called her; she did not reply. The smoke was
already pouring down the staircase. Mrs. Horncastle hesitated for a
moment only, and then, drawing a long breath, dashed up the stairs. On
the first landing she stumbled over something--the prostrate figure of
the nurse. But this saved her, for she found that near the floor she
could breathe more freely. Before her appeared to be an open door. She
crept along towards it on her hands and knees. The frightened cry of
a child, awakened from its sleep in the dark, gave her nerve to rise,
enter the room, and dash open the window. By the f