the burning
house, which seemed to be made of tinder, it blazed up so quickly.

Giles was making desperate efforts to enter by a window which vomited
fire and smoke that defied him. An upper window was thrown open, and
Samuel Twitter appeared in his night-dress, shouting frantically.

Stephen Welland saw that entrance or egress by lower window or staircase
was impossible. He had been a noted athlete at school. There was an
iron spout which ran from the street to the roof. He rushed to that,
and sprang up more like a monkey than a man.

"Pitch over blankets!" roared Giles, as the youth gained a window of the
first floor, and dashed it in.

"The donkey-cart!" shouted Welland, in reply, and disappeared.

Giles was quick to understand. He dragged--almost lifted--the donkey
and cart on to the pavement under the window where Mr Twitter stood
waving his hands and yelling. The poor man had evidently lost his
reason for the time, and was fit for nothing. A hand was seen to grasp
his neck behind, and he disappeared. At the same moment a blanket came
fluttering down, and Welland stood on the window-sill with Mrs Twitter
in his arms, and a sheet of flame following. The height was about
thirty feet. The youth steadied himself for one moment, as if to take
aim, and dropped Mrs Twitter, as he might have dropped a bundle. She
not only went into the vegetable cart, with a bursting shriek, but right
through it, and reached the pavement unhurt--though terribly shaken!

Four minutes had not yet elapsed. The crowd had thickened, and a dull
rumbling which had been audible for half a minute increased into a
mighty roar as the fiery-red engine with its brass-helmeted heroes
dashed round the corner, and pulled up with a crash, seeming to shoot
the men off. These swarmed, for a few seconds, about the hose, water
plug, and nozzles. At the same instant the great fire-escape came
rushing on the scene, like some antediluvian monster, but by that time
Giles had swept away the debris of the donkey-cart, with Mrs Twitter
imbedded therein, and had stretched the blanket with five powerful
volunteers to hold it. "Jump, sir, jump!" he cried. Samuel Twitter
jumped--unavoidably, for Welland pushed him--just as the hiss and
crackle of the water-spouts began.

He came down in a heap, rebounded like india-rubber, and was hurled to
one side in time to make way for one of his young flock.

"The children! the children!" screamed Mrs Twitter