e pouring continually along the choked
thoroughfares, striving to find safe places where they might bestow
such goods as they had succeeded in saving. Charitable persons were
occupied in housing and feeding those who had nothing of their own;
whilst others, whose fears were on a larger scale, were fleeing
altogether away from the city to friends in the country beyond,
desiring only to escape the coming judgment, which seemed like that
poured out on Sodom.

Dinah went back with a very grave face to her charge. The poor lady
had now recovered her senses, and though as weak as a newborn babe,
was able to smile from time to time upon her husband, who sat
beside her holding her hand between his. He was so overjoyed at
this happy change in his wife's condition that he had no thought to
spare at this moment for the peril of the city. He asked for no
news as Dinah appeared; and indeed it was very necessary that the
patient should not be in any wise alarmed or excited.

Dinah, however, was becoming very uneasy as time went on; and she
was certain that the air grew darker than could be accounted for by
the falling dusk, and upon going to the east window as the twilight
fell, she was appalled by the awful glare in the sky, and was
certain that now, indeed, she did begin to distinguish the roaring
of the flames as the wind drifted them ever onwards and onwards.

Had it not been for the exceedingly critical state in which the
patient lay, she would have suggested her removal before things
grew worse. As it was, it might be death to move her; and perhaps
the flames would be stayed ere they reached the noble cathedral
pile. Surely every effort would be made for that end. It was
difficult to imagine that the citizens would not combine together
in some great and mighty effort to save their homes and their
sanctuary before it should be too late.

"What an awful sight!" exclaimed a soft voice behind her. "Heaven
grant the peril be not so nigh as it looks!"

It was Lord Desborough, who had come in and was looking with
anxious eyes at the flaming sky, over which great clouds of sparks
and flaming splinters could be seen drifting. It might only be
fancy, but the room seemed to be growing hot with the breath of the
fire. The young nobleman's face was very grave and disturbed.

"What must we do?" he asked of Dinah. "Can she be moved? Ought we
to take her elsewhere?"

"I would we could," answered Dinah, "but she is so weak that it may