re had been extinguished.

But morning brought appalling accounts of its spread. Nothing had
been done, it seemed, to stay its course. It had reached Cheapside,
and was rushing a headlong course down it, and even the Guildhall,
men said, would not escape. North and west the great, rolling body
of the flames was spreading; churches were going down before it,
one after the other, as helplessly as the timber and plaster
houses, which burned like so much tinder. Hour after hour as that
day passed by fresh and terrible items of news were brought in.
Would anything ever stop the oncoming sea of fire? Surely--surely
something would be done to save St. Paul's. Surely that magnificent
and time-honoured structure would not be permitted to perish
without some attempt to save it!

Dinah went out at midday for a mouthful of air, leaving Janet in
charge of the sick lady. She turned her steps towards the great
edifice towering up in all its grandeur towards the sunny sky. It
was hard indeed to believe that it could succumb to the devouring
element, so solid and unconsumable it looked. Yet, although all men
were asserting vehemently that "Paul's could never burn," all faces
were looking anxious, and all ears were eagerly attuned to catch
any new item of news which a messenger or passerby might bring.

The murkiness in the air, faintly discernible even yesterday, had
become very marked by this time. The smell of fire was in the air,
although as yet the terrible roaring of the flames, of which all
men who had been near it were speaking, had not yet become audible
in the Babel of talk going on in the streets and about the great
church. The dean and canons were grouped about the precincts,
looking anxiously into each other's faces, as though to seek to
read encouragement from one another. Nothing was talked of but the
fire, the incapacity shown by the civic authorities in dealing with
it, and lamentations that good Sir John Lawrence, who had coped so
ably with the pestilence last year, should be no longer in office
at this second great crisis.

Still it was averred on all hands that something was about to be
done; that it was too scandalous to stand by panic stricken whilst
the whole city perished. Every one seemed to have heard talk
respecting the demolition or blowing up of houses in the path of
the flames; but none could say actually that it had been done, or
was about to be done, in any given locality.

Burned out households wer