s--has perished by one
common ruin, and left only this heap of embers! The deed has been my
fate. And what remains? A weary and aimless life,--a long repentance of
this hour,--and at last an obscure grave, where they will bury and
forget me!"

As the author concluded his dolorous moan, the extinguished embers
arose and settled down and arose again, and finally flew up the
chimney, like a demon with sable wings. Just as they disappeared, there
was a loud and solitary cry in the street below us. "Fire!" Fire! Other
voices caught up that terrible word, and it speedily became the shout
of a multitude. Oberon started to his feet, in fresh excitement.

"A fire on such a night!" cried he. "The wind blows a gale, and
wherever it whirls the flames, the roofs will flash up like gunpowder.
Every pump is frozen up, and boiling water would turn to ice the moment
it was flung from the engine. In an hour, this wooden town will be one
great bonfire! What a glorious scene for my next--Pshaw!"

The street was now all alive with footsteps, and the air full of
voices. We heard one engine thundering round a corner, and another
rattling from a distance over the pavements. The bells of three
steeples clanged out at once, spreading the alarm to many a neighboring
town, and expressing hurry, confusion, and terror, so inimitably that I
could almost distinguish in their peal the burden of the universal
cry,--"Fire! Fire! Fire!"

"What is so eloquent as their iron tongues!" exclaimed Oberon. "My
heart leaps and trembles, but not with fear. And that other sound,
too,--deep and awful as a mighty organ,--the roar and thunder of the
multitude on the pavement below! Come! We are losing time. I will cry
out in the loudest of the uproar, and mingle my spirit with the wildest
of the confusion, and be a bubble on the top of the ferment!"

From the first outcry, my forebodings had warned me of the true object
and centre of alarm. There was nothing now but uproar, above, beneath,
and around us; footsteps stumbling pell-mell up the public staircase,
eager shouts and heavy thumps at the door, the whiz and dash of water
from the engines, and the crash of furniture thrown upon the pavement.
At once, the truth flashed upon my friend. His frenzy took the hue of
joy, and, with a wild gesture of exultation, he leaped almost to the
ceiling of the chamber.

"My tales!" cried Oberon. "The chimney! The roof! The Fiend has gone
forth by night, and startled thousan