th refugees, come
in to escape the cold. They were most of them sitting in groups,
talking eagerly to one another. Some were lying asleep, stretched out
full length on the pews. A woman was going about, serving hot coffee
and soup and bread. The refugees ate hungrily, but on the faces of
almost all of them rested the same dispirited look of dazed wonder.
Apparently they were chiefly foreigners, the majority Italians, and it
was evident that they had lost everything they had possessed. Helen
stood watching them with a sad heart from the back of the church, and
Smith, looking at her, saw that her eyes were full of tears. He laid
his hand gently on her arm. "Please don't," he said gravely. But he
understood.

"But it seems so unfair for them to have lost everything," the girl
said. "They had so little to lose."

She turned her face to his.

"There is no answer to that," he said; "but we can help them a little."

To the woman in charge they gave what they could afford to give, and
turned toward home. It was nearly four o'clock, and Mrs. Maitland
might be growing anxious about their safety. They walked forward in a
silence which neither wished to break.

It was soon broken, however, by a chance occurrence. They were passing
by an open street on the edge of the burned district. Across the
street, under a none too steady wall, a woman whose distress had
evidently touched the good nature of the militiaman patrolling the
other end of the block was hunting about among heaps of debris,
searching for things which might perhaps have been spared by the
flames. On top of the house wall was a battered stone coping, which,
as Smith and Helen paused, gave a sudden lurch and seemed about to
fall. The woman, her head bent, saw nothing; but Smith, with a
startled exclamation, started quickly forward.

"Look out there!" he called sharply. "Come away from that wall!"

The woman, with her back turned, paid no attention to the
warning--probably did not even hear him. The coping, poised on the
wall's edge, swayed perilously. If it fell, there would be one less of
the indigent and helpless for the relief committees to support. With a
half angry exclamation Smith sprang forward.

On his sleeve he felt the quick pressure of a hand. At the same moment
the crouching woman, having finished her search, or perhaps moved by an
instinct of danger, walked slowly on, and out from under the wall. The
coping did not fall.

Smi