ds, your blood be on your own heads!"

Crux did not hesitate. He and his men saw that the game was up; without
another word they mounted their horses and galloped away.

While this scene was being enacted a dark creature, with darker designs,
entered the drinking saloon and descended to the cellar. Finding a
spirit-cask with a tap in it, Buttercup turned it on, then, pulling a
match-box out of her pocket she muttered, "I t'ink de hospitals won't
git much ob it!" and applied a light. The effect was more powerful than
she had expected. The spirit blazed up with sudden fury, singeing off
the girl's eyebrows and lashes, and almost blinding her. In her alarm
Buttercup dashed up to the saloon, missed her way, and found herself on
the stair leading to the upper floor. A cloud of smoke and fire forced
her to rush up. She went to the window and yelled, on observing that it
was far too high to leap. She rushed to another window and howled in
horror, for escape was apparently impossible.

Charlie heard the howl. He and his men had retired to a safe distance
when the fire was first observed--thinking the place empty--but the howl
touched a chord in our hero's sympathetic breast, which was ever ready
to vibrate. From whom the howl proceeded mattered little or nothing to
Charlie Brooke. Sufficient that it was the cry of a living being in
distress. He sprang at once through the open doorway of the saloon,
through which was issuing a volume of thick smoke, mingled with flame.

"God help him! the place'll blow up in a few minutes," cried Hunky Ben,
losing, for once, his imperturbable coolness, and rushing wildly after
his friend. But at that moment the thick smoke burst into fierce flame
and drove him back.

Charlie sprang up the staircase three steps at a time, holding his
breath to avoid suffocation. He reached the landing, where Buttercup
ran, or, rather, fell, almost fainting, into his arms. At the moment an
explosion in the cellar shook the building to its foundation, and,
shattering one of the windows, caused a draught of air to drive aside
the smoke. Charlie gasped a mouthful of air and looked round. Flames
were by that time roaring up the only staircase. A glance from the
nearest window showed that a leap thence meant broken limbs, if not
death, to both. A ladder up to a trap-door suggested an exit by the
roof. It might only lead to a more terrible leap, but meanwhile it
offered relief from imminent suffo