Long
before the flames themselves had reached it, the windows broke under
the heat of the advancing gases, and little fires began to appear on
the upper floors. Soon all the windows were alight, and this building
too shook beneath the force which there was no escaping. Its frame, to
be sure, stood bravely up, and after the fire was still to be seen,
almost intact, a tribute to its maker and design; but its contents,
alas, were not fireproof, and proved pabulum most welcome to the
element which welcomed almost all things.

The firemen along the eastern fringe had been laboring with
desperation. It was the seventh hour of steady battle, and many of
them were almost overcome by exhaustion; but those who faltered found
their places taken by others, and the unequal struggle went on. At
this point Smith, with his fire-line badge pinned to his coat in case
of challenge, was turning his hand to anything which seemed to need the
doing. A solid wall of fireproofs along Arch Street had held the fire
from spreading eastward there, but as Franklin Street was passed in the
southward sweep, the eastward urging was not wholly to be denied. At
five o'clock in the morning the four faces of Winthrop Square were all
involved, and the buildings along Devonshire Street had begun to yield.
Over at Washington and Tremont Streets the fire had now spread as far
south as Bedford--and the wind was still blowing steadily.

Gradually, for the last half hour, the velvet blackness of the upper
sky had been fading; gradually the sparks, as they mounted unceasingly,
had begun to seem less luminous; and the waves of smoke which had been
rising all night into the upper air became for the first time a little
dark against the sky. All night had this smoke been flung up from the
burning city, and always had it seemed white or reddish or dirty brown,
as it rose; all night had the air hung close in its smoky pall, seeming
to shut in the sad theater wherein this drama was being played; all
night had the fire been torch and lantern and moon and stars to those
who faced the fire.

Now, dimly across the eastern sky, was spread the first faint hint of a
wondering dawn. Far out over the harbor a lightening could be seen, a
prescience of day, and a ghostly half light, like that in a dim
cathedral, replaced the flame-lit darkness. There were mists above the
water, and the light gained progress slowly; still, it gained, and
presently the salt sea odors came