d kissed me.

This was all I wanted to hear at present, and I closed my eyes in order
to think it over the better.

My chief sensation was one of exultation that Tempest should risk his
life for me. It meant that I had won him back in spite of myself. Then
when I recalled the frightful blaze and noise of that night, I began to
realise what my rescue must have meant to any one. No one but a fellow
utterly scornful of danger, and utterly determined to save a life in
peril at all cost, could have ventured into that place. _He_ would have
done it for any one, I knew; but to come deliberately after me, who had
ruined his chances last term, and whom he despised as a pilferer and a
sneak--this was an act of heroism which it baffled me to contemplate,
and in the contemplation of which consequently I succumbed once more to
sleep and forgot everything.

As I slowly got better (and, after all, I was not much damaged, as soon
as I had got over the effects of the suffocation and terror of that
awful night) I heard more about the fire. Permission was given me to
see one friend a day for ten minutes at a time, and the reader may
imagine the wild excitement of those ten minutes.

I naturally called for Dicky Brown as my first man. He came, looking
rather scared, and was evidently relieved to find I was something better
than a mass of burns, and able to do my share in the conversation.

"It was a close shave for you, I can tell you," he said. "All the other
fellows hopped out long before the fire got bad, and no one fancied you
weren't out too. You must have been sleeping jolly sound. All of a
sudden one of your lot yelled out that you were missing. It was so hot
then the fellows were all standing back, but old Tempest, almost before
the chap had shouted, nipped into the middle of it, and made a dash for
your cubicle. My word! I wish I'd been there to see it! You were as
good as done for when he collared you and hauled you out. He fell with
you half-way down the stairs, but Sharpe and Pridgin and one or two
others caught him and fished him out with you over his shoulder. He
swears he's not damaged, but he's got his hand in a sling. I say, old
chap, it's no use blubbing; it's all right how."

"I wasn't blubbing," said I. "When you've got a cold in your head your
eyes water sometimes, don't they?"

"Rather, buckets," said the magnanimous Dicky.

Langrish was my next interviewer; and his account as an eye-witness w