her hand.

He leaped back from the window and disappeared--for just a moment. Then
he staggered into view, thrust a long and wide plank through his open
window, and, bearing down upon it, shoved hard and fast, thrusting the
novel bridge up to the sill of the window above Lyddy's own.

"What under the sun does that fellow mean to do?" gasped the girl, half
tempted to raise her own window so as to look up the narrow shaft between
the two buildings.

"He never would attempt to cross over to their flat," thought Lyddy. "That
would be quite too--ri--dic--u--lous----"

The youth was adjusting the plank. At first he could not steady it upon
the sill above Lyddy's kitchen window. And how dangerous it would be if
he attempted to "walk the plank."

And then there was a roaring sound above, a glare of light, a crash of
glass and a billow of black smoke suddenly--but only for a moment--filled
the space between the two buildings!

The girl almost fell to the floor. She had always been afraid of fire,
and it had been ever in her mind since they moved into this big tenement
house. And now it had come without her knowing it!

While she thought the young man to be trying to enter into a flirtation
with the girls in the flat above, the house was afire! No wonder so many
people had seemed running at the corner when she looked out of the front
window. The ladder-truck had swung around into the avenue without her
seeing it. Doubtless the street in front of the tenement was choked with
fire-fighting apparatus.

"Oh, dear me!" gasped Lyddy, reeling for the moment.

Then she dashed for the bedroom where her father lay. Smoke was sifting
in from the hall through the cracks about the ill-hung door.

"Father! Father!" she gasped.

He lay on the bed, as still as though sleeping. But the noise above should
have aroused him by this time, had her own shrill cry not done so.

Yet he did not move.

Lyddy leaped to the bedside, seizing her father's shoulder with desperate
clutch. She shook his frail body, and the head wagged from side to side on
the pillow in so horrible a way--so lifeless and helpless--that she was
smitten with terror.

Was he dead? He had never been like this before, she was positive.

She tore open his waistcoat and shirt and placed her hand upon his heart.
It was beating--but, oh, how feebly!

And then she heard the flat door opened with a key--'Phemie's key. Her
sister cried:

"Dear me, Lyddy! the hall is full