t she went into
fits a second time, and was carried with her mistress into the house,
where the cook still lay in violent hysterics.

Joe laid the bundle gently on the bed, and looked quickly at the
bystanders. Observing several cool and collected females among them, he
pointed to the bundle, which had begun to exhibit symptoms of life, and
said briefly, "She's all right, look after her," and vanished like a
wreath of that smoke into which in another moment he plunged.

He was not a moment too soon, for he found Bob Clazie, despite his
fortitude and resolution, on the point of abandoning the window, where
the smoke had increased to such a degree as to render suffocation
imminent.

"Can't stand it," gasped Bob, scrambling a few paces down the ladder.

"Give us the branch, Bob, I saw where it was in fetchin' out the old
woman," said Joe in a stifled voice.

He grasped the copper tube from which the water spouted with such force
as to cause it to quiver and recoil like a living thing, so that, being
difficult to hold, it slipped aside and nearly fell. The misdirected
water-spout went straight at the helmet of a policeman, which it knocked
off with the apparent force of a cannon shot; plunged into the bosom of
a stout collier, whom it washed whiter than he had ever been since the
days of infancy, and scattered the multitude like chaff before the wind.
Seeing this, the foreman ordered "Number 3" engine, (which supplied the
particular branch in question), to cease pumping.

Joe recovered the erratic branch in a moment, and dragged it up the
escape, Bob, who was now in a breatheable atmosphere, helping to pass up
the hose. The foreman, who seemed to have acquired the power of being
in several places at one and the same moment of time, and whose watchful
eye was apparently everywhere, ordered Bob's brother David and another
man named Ned Crashington, to go up and look after Joe Dashwood.

Meanwhile Joe shouted, "Down with Number 3;" by which he meant, "up with
as much water as possible from Number 3, and as fast as you can!" and
sprang into the room from which he had just rescued the old woman. In
passing out with her he had observed a glimmer of flame through the door
which he had first broken open, and which, he reflected while descending
the escape, was just out of range of Bob Clazie's branch. It was the
thought of this that had induced him to hurry back so promptly; in time,
as we have seen, to relieve his comr