e we could go through the lines?" Smith inquired. "I've
got a New York fire badge."

"All right for you, sir--I'll pass you on it--but not for the lady."

This did not admit of an argument.

"Now, aren't you sorry you brought me?" asked the girl.

"Well, no," said her companion. "Hardly--yet. Let's try a little
strategy."

In front of them School Street was filled with wild turmoil. Here were
hose carts and gray, snaky hose lines stretching along the pavement in
weird, curves and spurting tiny streams from imperfect couplings; here
were firemen rushing excitedly back and forth, hoarsely calling orders
which no one seemed to hear. Along the curb were chemicals, hook and
ladders, patrols, all of them now stripped of their apparatus; while at
every corner beside a hydrant, each one chugging steadily away like the
regular, vibrant pulse from some giant heart, were the fire engines.
Out of their funnels poured a steady flare of cinders and smoke; on the
pavement beneath them the embers lay crimson; and the scarlet flashes,
whenever the fire doors were opened, showed the glowing furnaces within.

Retracing their steps toward Tremont Street, Smith and Helen skirted
the Tremont Temple, then east along Bosworth until they came to
Province Street. Up this narrow passage, which passes as such only by
a courtesy peculiarly Bostonian, they went, finding themselves
presently back almost where they had started, but at a point of vantage
whence they could see the western face of the fire, which was now
beginning to threaten hungrily westward toward the stout old stone
walls of the City Hall.

And now the building of the Boston _News_, although protected by a
system of automatic sprinklers, was thoroughly ablaze, as was the Miles
Block immediately fronting City Hall Avenue. It was from this last
building that the City Hall stood in jeopardy.

In Province Street, protected from the surge of activities beyond, the
onlookers could watch most of the fight to save the old building. And
a gallant fight it was, for the space between the fire and the coping
of the old stone structure's eastern wall was a scant thirty feet.
Fortunately, however, the wind was blowing almost directly from the
north, and this gave the firemen a chance. From the movements of the
department and the snatches of orders which could occasionally be
heard, Smith gathered that a similar struggle was going on in at least
three directions from the blazing b