t it--everything," the girl demanded. "We have really
heard nothing all day. What we have heard has been chiefly what we
could learn from the servants, and they understand so little of what is
actually happening."

"I have been out near the Public Gardens," said her uncle; "and though
I couldn't see much, I probably could see almost as much as though I
had been a good deal nearer. On the whole, things seem very favorable.
I would not go so far as to say that the end is in sight; but in a
certain sense the fire is under control, and I believe that the worst
is over at last."

"How far does it extend now?"

"Well, they have managed to prevent its getting across Tremont Street;
in fact, they have held it on both east and west. You see, most of the
railroad yards below the South Station were cleared in time, and that
left little or no fuel on the east side. The fire now, instead of
having a clean sweep from the Common to the Channel, has a path barely
half that width. It is now as far south as Oak Street, and Hollis
Street west of that."

"Dear me! Has the good old Hollis Theater gone, then?"

"I don't see how it could very well have escaped. But it wasn't a very
attractive theater, though, anyway. Why do you ask about it? They
have needed a new building there for a long time."

"Yes--but some of the happiest evenings I have ever had were there. It
isn't the upholstery of the seats or the mural decorations or what the
theater looks like, but what you hear there. Don't you think that a
theater gets to retain some of its traditions and its greatest
associations? It sounds as though I were an old woman; but every time
I go there, I seem to feel that the theater remembers, just as I do,
the thrills that its walls have known."

"Would you rather it had been left to be torn down, then?" inquired her
uncle, with a smile.

"Well, possibly not. That would be worse than this. Perhaps it is
better to 'give her to the God of Storms,' after all."

"Perhaps," agreed Mr. Osgood, gently.

For a half an hour longer they talked, and he told them as much as he
knew of what already had been destroyed, and what the final reckoning
would unclose. He spoke as cheerfully as he could, but Helen, watching
him closely, saw that back of this there was a profound sadness.

"Is it so very terrible, Uncle Silas?" she asked at last, laying her
hand affectionately on his sleeve.

"Very. It is as bad as it could be, my child,