ance of the street--somewhere now
where all the gas-lamps' cold green stars are merged in one--now nearer,
nearer still; and with it, bringing folk to doors and windows to see
them pass, the war-cry of the men that fight the flames. Charioteers
behind blood-horses bathed in foam; heads helmeted in flashing
splendour; eyes all intent upon the track ahead, keen to anticipate the
risks of headlong speed and warn the dilatory straggler from its path.
Nearer and nearer--in a moment it will pass and take some road unknown
to us, to say to fires that even now are climbing up through roof and
floor, clasping each timber in a sly embrace fatal as the caress of
Death itself:--"Thus far shalt thou go and no farther!" Close upon us
now, to be stayed with a sudden cry--something in the path! Too late!

Too late, though the strong hand that held the reins brought back the
foaming steeds upon their haunches, with startled eyes and quivering
nostrils all agape. Too late, though the helmeted men on the engine's
flank were down, almost before its swerve had ceased, to drag at every
risk from beneath the plunging hoofs the insensible body of the child
that had slipped from a clay heap by the roadside, on which it stood to
gaze upon the coming wonder, and gone headlong down quite suddenly upon
the open road.

You who read this, has it ever fallen to your lot to guide two swift
horses at a daring speed through the narrow ways, the ill-driven
vehicles, the careless crowds and frequent drunkards of the slum of a
great city? If so, you have earned some right to sit in judgment on the
fire-engine that ran our little friend down. But you will be the last of
all men to condemn that fire-engine.

"Dead, mate?" One of the helmeted men asks this of the other as they
escape from the plunging hoofs. They are used to this sort of thing--to
every sort of thing.

"Insensible," says the other, who holds in his arms the rescued child, a
mere scrap of dust and clay and pallor and a little blood.

A fire-engine calculates its rights to pause in fractions of a minute.
The unused portion of twenty seconds the above conversation leaves,
serves for a glance round in search of some claimant of the child, or a
responsible police-officer to take over the case. Nothing presents
itself but Mrs. Tapping, too much upset to be coherent, and not able to
identify the child; Mrs. Riley, little better, but asking:--"Did the
whales go overr it, thin?" The old man Sam, t