nds that people
have about a house, never thinking what would become of them in a
night like this. So Barbara stood by.

Suddenly somebody, just come, and springing in at the open door, heard
his name.

"Harry! Help me with this!" And Harry Goldthwaite pushed aside two men
at the foot of the staircase, lifted up a small boy and swung him over
the baluster, and ran up to the landing.

"Take hold of it with me," said Barbara, hurriedly. "It is valuable.
We must carry it ourselves. Don't let anybody touch it. Over to Mrs.
Hobart's."

"Hendee!" called out Harry to Mark Hendee, who appeared below. "Keep
those people off, will you? Make way!" And so they two took the big
basket steadily by the ears, and went away with it together. The first
we knew about it was when, on their way back, they came down upon our
line of march toward Elijah's door.

Beyond this, there was no order to chronicle. So far, it seems longer
in the telling than it did in the doing. We had to work "awful quick,"
as Mrs. Hobart said. But the nice and hazardous work was all done.
Even the press that held the table-napery was emptied to the last
napkin, and all was safe.

Now the hall doors were thrown open; wagons were driven up to the
entrances, and loaded with everything that came first, as things are
ordinarily "saved" at a fire. These were taken over to Mrs. Lewis
Marchbanks's. Books and pictures, furniture, bedding, carpets;
quantities were carried away, and quantities were piled up on the
lawn. The men-servants came and looked after these; they had done all
they could elsewhere; they left the work to the firemen now, and there
was little hope of saving the house. The window-frames were smoking,
and the panes were cracking with the heat, and fire was running along
the piazza roofs before we left the building. The water was giving
out.

After that we had to stand and see it burn. The wells and cisterns
were dry, and the engines stood helpless.

The stable roofs fell in with a crash, and the flames reared up as
from a great red crater and whirlpool of fire. They lashed forth and
seized upon charred walls and timbers that were ready, without their
touch, to spring into live combustion. The whole southwest front of
the mansion was overswept with almost instant sheets of fire. Fire
poured in at the casements; through the wide, airy halls; up and into
the rooms where we had stood a little while before; where, a little
before that, the children h