turning her eyes from the mill.

For suddenly above the other clamor there had risen one horrible
scream, and now, following it, there was almost a silence.

"Why--what on earth--" panted Miss Ives, looking to Mrs. Arbuthnot for
explanation after an endless interval in which neither stirred. But
again they were interrupted, this time by such an outbreak of shouting
and cries from the watching crowd about the mill as made the night
fairly ring.

A moment later the entire top of the mill collapsed, sending a gush of
sparks far up into the night. Then at last the faithfully played hoses
began to gain control.

"Do run down and find out what the shouting was, Emma," said Julie.
Emma gladly obeyed.

"She'd come back, if anything had happened," said Julie, some ten
minutes later.

"Who--Emma?" Mrs. Arbuthnot was not alarmed. "Oh, surely!" she yawned,
and drew her wraps about her.

"It's all over now. But I suppose it will burn for hours. I think I'll
turn in again," she said.

"I've had enough, too!" Julie said, not quite easy herself, but glad to
find the other so. "Let's decamp."

She wheeled the invalid carefully back to her room, where both women
were still talking when a bell-boy knocked, bringing a message from the
doctor. A woman had been hurt; he would be busy with her for an hour.

"Who was it?" Julie asked him, but the boy, obviously frantic to return
to the fascinations of the fire, didn't know.

It was more than an hour later that the doctor came in. Julie had been
reading to Ann. She shut the book.

"Jim! What on earth has kept you so long?"

"Frighten you, dear?" The doctor was very pale; he looked, between the
dirt and disorder of his clothes, and the anxiety of his face, like an
old man.

"Some one was hurt?" flashed Julie, solicitous at once.

"Has no one told you about it?" he wondered. "Lord! I should think it
would be all over the place by this time!"

He dropped into an easy chair, and sank his head wearily into his hands.

"Lord--Lord--Lord!" he muttered. Then he looked up at his wife with the
smile that never failed her.

"Jim--no one was killed?"

"Oh, no, dear! No, I'll tell you." He came over and sat beside her on
the bed, patting her hand. The two women watched him with tense,
absorbed faces.

"When I got there," said the doctor, slowly, "there was quite a
crowd--the lower story of the mill was all aflame--and the firemen were
keeping the people back. They'd a ladder up a