ranged
itself against the south wall of the second warehouse, its top rung
striking ten feet short of the eaves. She hoped that no one had any
notion of mounting that ladder.

A figure appeared upon it immediately, that of a gentleman, bareheaded
and in evening dress, with a brass trumpet swinging from a cord about
his shoulders; the noise grew less; the shouting died away, and the
crowd became almost silent, as the figure, climbing slowly drew up above
their heads. Two or three rungs beneath, came a second--a man in helmet
and uniform. The clothes of both men, drenched by the bucketeers, clung
to them, steaming. As the second figure mounted, a third appeared;
but this was the last, for the ladder was frail, and sagged toward the
smoking wall with the weight of the three.

The chief, three-fourths of the way to the top, shouted down a stifled
command, and a short grappling-ladder, fitted at one end with a pair of
spiked iron hooks, was passed to him. Then he toiled upward until his
feet rested on the third rung from the top; here he turned, setting his
back to the wall, lifted the grappling-ladder high over his head so
that it rested against the eaves above him, and brought it down sharply,
fastening the spiked hooks in the roof. As the eaves projected fully
three feet, this left the grappling-ladder hanging that distance out
from the wall, its lowest rung a little above the level of the chief's
shoulders.

Miss Betty drew in her breath with a little choked cry. There was a
small terraced hill of piled-up packing-boxes near her, possession of
which had been taken by a company of raggamuffinish boys, and she found
herself standing on the highest box and sharing the summit with these
questionable youths, almost without noting her action in mounting
thither, so strained was the concentration of her attention upon the
figure high up in the rose-glow against the warehouse wall. The man,
surely, surely, was not going to trust himself to that bit of wooden web
hanging from the roof! Where was Miss Bareaud that she permitted it?
Ah, if Betty had been Fanchon and madwoman enough to have accepted
this madman, she would have compelled him to come down at once, and
thereafter would lock him up in the house whenever the bells rang!

But the roof was to be mounted or Robert Carewe's property lost. Already
little flames were dancing up from the shingles, where firebrands had
fallen, their number increasing with each second. So Va