not
come upon him because Carewe had a daughter into whose eyes Tom had
looked; nor did he rage because he believed that Crailey's life and
his were in the greater hazard for the lack of every drop of water that
should have issued from the empty nozzle. Their lungs were burdened with
smoke, while the intolerable smarting of throat, eyes, and nostrils was
like the incision of a thousand needles in the membranes; their clothes
were luminous with glowing circles where the sparks were eating; the
blaze widened on the wall beneath them, and Marsh was shouting hoarsely
that he could no longer hold his position on the ladder; yet Crailey
knew that none of this was in Tom's mind as he stood, scorched,
blistered, and haggard, on the edge of the roof, shaking his fist at
the world. It was because his chance of saving the property of a man he
despised was being endangered.

Crailey stretched forth a hand and touched his friend's knee. "Your side
of the conversation is a trifle loud, Tom," he said. "Miss Carewe is
down there, across the street, on a pile of boxes."

Tom stopped in the middle of a word, for which he may have received
but half a black stroke from the recording angel. He wheeled toward the
street, and, shielding his inflamed eyes with his hand, gazed downward
in a stricken silence. From that moment Mr. Vanrevel's instructions to
his followers were of a decorum at which not the meekest Sunday-school
scholar dare have cavilled.

The three men now on the long ladder, Marsh, Eugene Madrillon, and Will
Cummings, found their position untenable; for the flames, reaching all
along the wall, were licking at the ladder itself, between Marsh and
Eugene. "I can't stand this any longer," gasped Tappingham, "but I can't
leave those two up there, either."

"Not alone," shouted Cummings from beneath Madrillon. "Let's go up."

Thus it happened, that when the water came again, and Vanrevel let it
fall in a grateful cascade upon Crailey and himself, three manly voices
were heard singing, as three men toiled through the billows of rosy
gray, below the beleaguered pair:

"Oh the noble Duke of York, He had Ten thousand men; He marched them up
the side of a house, And marched them down again!"

A head appeared above the eaves, and Marsh, then Eugene, then Cummings,
came crawling over the cornice in turn, to join their comrades. They
were a gallant band, those young gentlemen of Rouen, and they came with
the ironical song on their