The San Francisco Call. Newspaper, January 31, 1904, Page 4

THE SAN FRANCISCO SUNDAY CALL. : g AN ) AN A\ to present him to my daughter. The quarrel between us—" Mr. Carewe broke off for s moment, his hands clinching the arms of his chair, while he swallowed with difficulty, as though he choked upon some acrid bolus, and he was so strongly agitated by his own mention of his enemy that he con- trolled himself by & painful effort of his will. “The quarrel between us is political—and personal. You will re- member.” “I shall remember,” she answered in a rather frightened voice. * ¢ * It was long before she fell asleep. - alone must hover about the gates or steal into your garden Illke a thief,” the Incroyable had said. “The last time I spoke to him it was to tell him that if he ever set foot on ground of mine, I'd shoot him down!"” had been her father's declaration. And Mr. Carewe had spoken with the most un- deniable air of meaning what he sald. Yet she knew that the Incroyable would come again. Also, with hot cheeks pressed into her pillow, Miss Betty had identified the young man in the white hat, that dark person whose hand she had far too impetuously seized in both of hers. Aha! It was this gentleman who looked into people’s eyes and stam- mered so sincerely over & pretty speech that you almost believed him; it was he who was to marry Fanchon Bareaud—"if he remembers!” No wonder Fanchon had been in such a hurry to get him away. “If he re- members!” Such was that young man’s character, was it? Miss Carewe laughed aloud to her pillow; for was cne to guess the reason, also, of his not having come to her ball? Had the poor man been commanded to be “out of town?” Then remembering the piquant and generous face of Fanchon, Betty clinched her fingers tightly and crushed the imp who had suggested the unworthy thought, crushed him to & wretched pulp and threw him out of the open window. He im- mediately sneaked in by the back way, for, in spite of her victory, she still felt a little sorry for poor Fanchon. CHAPTER 1IV. “BUT SPARE YOUR COUNTRY'S FLAG.” If it be true that love is the great incentive to the useless arts, the num- ber of gentlemen who became poets for the sake of Miss Betty Carewe need not be considered extraordinary. Of all that was written of her danc- ing, Tom Vanrevel's lines, “I Danced with Her Beneath the Lights” (which he certainly had not done when he wrote them) were, perhaps, next to Cralley Gray's in merit, though Tom burned his rhymes after reading them to Crailey. Other troubadours were not so modest, and the Rouen Journal found no lack of tuneful offering, that spring, generously printing all of it, even at the period when it became ep- idemic. The public had little difficul- ty in recognizing the work of Mr. ancis Chenoweth in an anonymous ‘Sonnet” (of twenty - three lines) which appeared in the issue fol- lowing Miss Carewe's debut. Mr. Chenoweth wrote that while dancing the mazourka with a lovely being, the sweetest feelings of his soul, in a celestial stream, bore him away beyond control, in a ser- aphic dream; and he untruthfully stated that at the same time he saw her wipe the silent tear, omitting, however, to venture any explanation of the cause of her emotion. Old General Trumble boldly signed his poem in full It was called “An Ode Upon Miss C—'s Waltzing,” and it began: When Bettina found fair Rouen's shore, And ber aged father to us bore Her from tbe clolster meat, She waltzed upon the baliroom floor, And lightly twirled upon her feet. Mr. Carewe was rightfully indig- nant, and refused to acknowledge the general’s salutation at their next meeting; Trumble was fifteen years older than he. As Crailey Gray never danced with Miss Carewe, it is somewhat singular that she should have been, the inspiration of his swinging verses in waltz measwe, “Heart Strings on a Violin the sense of which was that when a violin had played for her dancing, the in- strument should be shattered as wine glasses are after a great toast. How- ever, no one, except the author him- self, knew that Betty was the subject; for Crailey centainly did not mention it to Miss Bareaud, nor to his best friend, Vanrevel. It was to some degree a strange com- radeship between these two young men; their tastes led them so often in opposite directions. They had rooms together over their offices in the Ma- drillon block, on Main street, and the lights shone late from their windows every night in the year. Sometimes that would mean only that the two friends were talking, for they never reached a silent intimacy, but, even after several years of companionship, were rarely seen together when not in interested, ®ften eager, conversation, so that people wondered what in the world they still found to say to each other. But many a night the late- " shining lamp meant that Tom sat alone, with a brief or a book, or wooed the lorn hours with his magical guitar. For he never went to bed un- til the other came home. And if day- light came without Crailey, Vanrevel would go out, yawning mightily, to look for him; and when there was no finding him, Tom would come back, sleepless, to the day’s work. Cralley was called “peculiar,” and he explained, with a kind of jovial helplessness, that he was always pre- pared for the unexpected in himself, nor did such a view detract from his picturesqueness to his own perusal of himself; though it was not only to himself that he was interesting. To S s RN =20 W s\ )2 V<UD A 7, ST SN % quiet . souls who hovered along the walls at merry-makings and cheer- fully counted themselves spectators at the play, Crailey Gray held the center of the stage and was the chief come- dian of the place. Wit, poet and scapegrace, the small society “some- times seemed the mere background set for his performances, spectacles which he, also, enjoyed, and from the best seat in the house; for he was not content as the actor, but must be the Prince in the box as well, His friendship for Tom Vanrevel was, in a measure, that of the vine for the oak. He was full of levities at Tom's expense, which the other bore with a grin of sympathetic compre- hension, * or, at long intervals, re- turned upon Crailey with devastating effect. Vanrevel was the one steady- ing thing in his life, and, at the same time, the only one of the young men upon whom he did not have an almost mesmeric influence. In good {truth, Cralley was the ringleader in all the devliries of the town. Many a youth swore to avoid the roisterer's com- pany for all time, and, within two hours of the vow, found himself, flag- on in hand, engaged in a bout that would last the night, with Mr, Gray out-bumpering the hardiest, at the head of the table. And, the next morning, the fevered, scarlet-eyed perjurer might creep shaking to his wretched tasks, only to behold the cause of his folly and headache trip- ping merrily along the street, smiling, clean shaven, and fresh as a dew-born primrose, with, perchance, two or three of the prettiest girls in town at his elbow to greet his sallies with ap- proving laughter. Crailey hal been so long in the habit of following every impulse, no matter how mad, that he enjoyed an almost perfect immunity from con- demnation, and, whatever his deeds, Rouen had Jearned to say, with a chuckle, that it was ‘“only Crailey Gray again.”” But his followers were not so privileged. Thus, when: Mr. Gray, who in his libations sometimes developed the humor of an urchin, went to the Pound at three in ‘the morning of New Year's day, hung sleigh bells about the necks of the cattle and drove them up and down the streets, himself hideously blowing 4 brass horn from the back of a big brown steer, those roused from slum- ber ceased to rage, and accepted the exploit as a rare joke, on learning that it was “only Crailey Gray!'; but the unfortunat: young Chenoweth was heavily frowned upon and prop- erly upbraided because he had fol- lowed in the wake of the bovine pro- cession, mildly attempting to play up- on a flage “let. Crailey never denied a folly nor de- fended an escapade. The latter was always done for him, because he talked of his “graceless misdoings” (so he was wont, smilingly, to call them) over ups of tea in the after- noons with old ladles, lamenting, in his musical voice, the lack of female relatives to guide him. He *was charmingly attentive to the elderly wo- men, not from policy, but because his manner was uncontrollably chival- rous; and, ever a gallant listener, were the speaker young, old, great or humble, he never forgot to catch the last words of a sentence, and seldom suffered for a reply, even when he had drowsed through a question. Moreover, no one ever heard him speak a sullen word, nor saw him wear a brow of depression. The sin- gle creed to which he was constant was that of good. cheer; he was the very apostle of gayety, preaching it in parlor and bar; and made merry friends with battered tramps and homeless dogs in the streets at night. Now and then he would spend sev- eral days in the offices of Gray & Van- revel, attorneys and counselors-at- law, wearing an air of unassailable virtue; though he did not far, over- state the case when he said,”“Tom does all the work and gives me all the’ money not to bother him when he's getting up a case.” The working member of the firm got up cases to notable effect, and few lawyers. in the State enjoyed having Tom Vanrevel on the other side. There. was pothing about him of the floridity prevalent at that time; he withered “‘oratory” before the court; he was the foe of jury pathos; and, despising noise and the habitual volce dip at the end of a sentence, was, neverthe- less, at times an almost’fearfully ef- fective orator. So by degrees the firm of Gray & Vanrevel, young as it was, and in spite of the idle appren-~ tice, had grown to be the most pros- perous in the district. For this emi- nence Crailey was never accused of assuming the credit. Nor did he ever miss an opportunity of making known how much he owed to his partner. ‘What he owed, in brief, was every- thing. How well Vanrevel worked was demonstrated every day, byt how hard he worked, only Crailey knew. The latter had grown to depend upon him for even his political beliefs, and lightly followed his partner into aboli- tionism; though that was 'to rsk un- populcrity, bitter hatred, and worse. Fortunately, on certain occasions, Vanrevel had made himself (if not his creed) respected, at least so far that there was no longer danger of mob- violence for an Abolitionist in Rouen. He was a cool-headed young man or- dinarily, and possessed of an elusive forcefulness not to be trified with, though he was a quiet man, and had what they called a “fine manner.” And, not in the latter, but in his dress, there was an ecHo of the beau, which afforded Mr. Gray a point of gttack for sallies of wit; there was a todch of the dandy about Vanrevel; he had a large and versatile wardrobe, and his clothes always fit him not only in line but in color; even women saw how nobly they were fashioned. These two young men were mem- bers of a cheerful band, who feasted, laughed, wrangled over politics, danced, made love, and sang terrible NT W - . NER the vislon of the lookers-on in Rouen, _As young men will. chords on summer evenings, together, Will Cummings, editor of the Rouen Journal, was one of these; a tall, sallow man, very thin, very awkward and very gentle. Mr. Cummin; proved himself always ready with a loud and friendly laugh for the poorest joke in the world, his countenance shining with such kind- ness that no one ever had the heart to reproadh him with the evils of his Journalistic performances, or for the things he broke when he danced. An- other was Tappingham Marsh, an ex- ceedingly handsome person, some- what languld, in appearance, dainty in manner” wi women, offhand with men; almost as kless as Crailey, and often the latter's companion and assistant in dissipation. Young Fran- cis Chenoweth never failed to follow both into whatever they planned; he was short and pink, and the uptilt of his nose was coherent with the ap- pealing earnestness which was habit- uel with him. FEugene Madrillon was the sixth of these intimates; a dark man, whose Latin eves and color ad- vertised his French ancestry as plain- ly as his emotionless mouth and lack of gesture betrayed the mingling, of another strain. ’ All these, and others of the town, were wont to “talk politics” a great deal at the little club on Main street, and all were apt tp fall foul of Tom Vanrevel or Cralley Gray before the end of any discyssion. For those were the days when they twisted the lion's tail in vehement and bitter earnest; when the eagle screamed in mixed figures; when few men knew how to talk, and many orated; when party strife was savagely personal; when in- tolerance was called the “pure fire of patriotism”;' -when criticism of the existing order of things surely in- curred fiery anathema and black in- vective; and brave was he, indeed, who dared to hint that his country, as a whole and politically, did lack some two or three particular virtues, and that the first step toward obtain- ing them would bg to help it to real- ize their absence. This latter point of view was that of the firm of Gray & Vanrevel, which was a unit in such matters. Crailey did most of the talking—quite beauti- fully, too—and both had to stand against odds in many a sour argu- ment, fcr they were not only aboli- tionists,” but opposed the attitude of their country “in its difficulty with Mexico, and, in common with other men of the time who took their stand, they had to grow accustomed to being called disloyal traitors, foreign toadies, malignants and traducers of the flag. Tom had long been used to epithets of this sort, suffering their sting in quiet, and was glad when he could keep Cralley out of worse em- ployment than standing firm.for an unpopular belief. There was one place to which Van- revel, seeking his friend and partner, when the latter did not come home at night, could not ‘go; this was the tower chamber, and it was in that mysterious apartment of the Carewe cupola that Crailey was apt to be deeply occupied when he remained away until daylight. Strange as it ap- pears, Mr. Gray maintained peculiar relations of intimacy with® Robert Carewe, in spite of the feud between Carewe and his own best friend. This intimacy, which did not necessarily imply any mutual fondness (though Crailey seemed to dislike nobody), was betokened by a furtive understanding, of a sort, between them. They held brief, earnest conversations on the street, or in corners when they met at other people’s houses, always speak- ing in voices too low to be heard; and they exercised a mysterious sym- bolism, somewhat in the mgnper of fellow-members of a secret ;:lety: they had been observed to cammuni- cate across crowded rooms, by lifted eyebrow, nod of head, or a surrepti- tious turn of the wrist; so that those who observed them knew that a ques- tion had been asked and answered. It was noticed, also, that there were five other intimates to this masonry— Eugene Madrillon, the elder Cheno- weth, General Trumble, Tappingham Marsh and Jefferson Bareaud. Thus, on the afternoon following Miss Betty's Introduction to Rouen’s favo- rite sons and daughters, Mr. Carewe, driving down Main street, held up one forefinger to Madrillon as he saw the young man turning in at the club. Eugene nodded gravely, and, as he went in, discovering Marsh, the gener- al, and others, listening to Mr. Gray's explanation of his return from the river with no fish, stealthil:- held up one finger in his turn. Trumble re- plied with a wink, Tappingham nodded, but Crailey slightly shook his head, Marsh and the general started with surprise, and stared incredulous- ly. That Crailey should shake his head! If the signal had been for a church meeting they might have un- derstood. . Mr. Gray's .nduct was surprising two other people at about the same time—Tom Vanrevel and Fanchon Bareaud; {ie former by his sudden devotion to the law; the latter by his sudden ‘devotion to herself. In a breath, he became almost a domestic character. No more did he spend his afternoons between the club and the Rouen House bar, nor was his bay mare so often seen stamping down the ground about Mrs. McDougal’s hitching post while McDougal was out on the prairie with his engineering squad. The idle apprentice was at his desk,: and in the daytime he displayed an aversion for the streets, which was more than his partner did, for the in- dustrious Tom, undergoing quite as re- markable an alteration of habit, be- came, all at once, little better than a corner loafer. His efavorite lounging place was a small drug store where Carewe street debouched upon Main; nevertheless, so adhesive is a reputa- tion once fastened, his air of being there upon business deceived every one except Mry Gray. Miss Bareaud was even happler than <y =2 N N7 RS = 3 she was astonished (and she was mightily astonished) to find her- be- trothed developing a taste for her so- clety alone. Formerly, she had counted upon the gayeties of her hom® to keep Cralley near her; now, however, he told her tenderly he wished to have her all to himself. This was not like him, but Fanchon did not question; and it was very sweet to her that he began to make it his custom to eome in by a side gate and meet her under an apple tree in the dusk, where they would sit quietly together through th. evening, listening to the noise and laughter from the lighted /house. That house was the maost hospitable in Rouen. Always cheerfully “full of company,” as they said, it was the sort of house where a carpet dance could be arranged in half an hour; a house with® a sideboard like the widow’s cruse; the young men always found more. Mrs. Bareaud, a Scutherner, loving to per- suade the visitor that hor home was h's, not hers, lived only for her art, wh.ch was that of the table. Evil cooks, tak- ing service with her, became virtuous, dealt with nectar and ambrosia, and grew fit to pander to Olympus, learn- ‘ing of their mistress secrets to make the ill-disposed as genial gods ere they departed. Mr. Baresud at fifty had lived sa well that he gave up waiking, which did not trouble him; but at sixty he gave up dancing, which did trouble him. His only. hope, he declared, was in Crailey Gray's promise to invent for him a concave partner, There was a thin, quizzing shank of a son, Jefferson, who lived upon quinine, ague and deviltry; and there were the two daughters, Fanchon and Virginia. The latter was .three years older than Fanchon, as dark as Fanchon was fair, though not nearly so pr-tty; a small, good-natured, romping sprite of a girl, who had handed down the heart and hand of Crailey Gray to her sister with the b st rrace in the world. For she had been the herolne of one of Mr. Gray's half dozen or so most serious affairs, and, after a furious rivalry with Mr, Carewe, the victory was generally conceded to Crailey. His triumph had been about a fortnight's duration when Fanchon returned from St. Mary's; and, with the advent of the youngdt sister, the "~ -~ who had decided that Cralley was the incampzarable she had dreamed of since infancy, was gener- ously alowed to discover that he was not that vision—that she had fallen in love with her own idea of him; whereas Fanchon cared only that he be Crailey Gray, whatever kind of vision that was. And Fanchon discovered that it was a great many kinds. The transfer was made comfortably with nice judgment of a respectable interregnum, and to the greater happi- ness of each of the three young people; no objection asuing from the easy- going parents, who were devotedly fond of Crailey, while the town laughed and said it was only that absurd Crailey Gray again. He and Virginia were the best of friends, and accepted their new relation with a preposterous lack of embarrassment. To be in love with Crailey became Fanchon's vocation; she spent all her time at it, and produced a blurred ef- fect upon strangers. The only man with whom she seemed quite alive was Vanrevel; a little because Tom talked of Crailey and a great deal because she could talk of Crailey to Tom: could tell him freely, aseshe could tell no one elses how wonderful Crailey was, and explain to him her lover’s vagaries on the ground that it was 4 necessity of geniuses to be unlike the less gifted. Nor was she alone in suspecting Mr. Gray of genius; in the first place, he was so odd; in the second, his poems were “already at- tracting more than local attention,” as the Journal remarked, generously, for Crailey had ceased to present his rhymes te that valuable paper. Ay! Boston, no less, was his mart. He was rather radical in his literary preferenc and hurt the elder Cheno- weth’s reellx:n by laughing heartily at some roems of the late Lord Byron; offended many people by disliking the style of Sir Edward Bulwer, and even refused to admit that James Fenimore Cooper was the greatest novelist that ever lived. But these things were as nothing compared with his unpatriotic defense of Charles Dickens. Many Americans had fallen into a great rage over the vivacious assault upon the United States in Martin Chuzzlewit; nevertheless, Crailey still boldly hailed h.m (as every one had heretofore agreed) the most dexterous writer of his Cay and the most notable humorist of any day. Of course the Englishman had not visited and thoroughly studied such a city as Rouen, Crailey confessed. twinklingly; but, after all, wasn't there some truth in Martin Chuzzlewit? Mr. Dickens might have been far from a clear understanding of our people; but didn’t it argue a pretty ticklish vanity in ourselves that we were so flercely resentful of satire: and was not this very heat over Martin Chuzzlewit a v~ . firmation of one of the, points the book had presented against us? Gen- eral Trumble replied to this suggestion with a personal one to the effect that a man capable of saying a good word for 80 monstrous a slander, that a man, gir, capable of declaring his native country to be vain or sensitive cught to be horsewhipped, and at this Crailey Jaughed consumedly. Trumble retorted with the names of Benedict Arnold and Aaron Burr. “And if it comes to a war with these Greas- ers,” he spluttered apoplectically, “and it is coming, mighty soon, we'll find Mr. Gray down in Mexico, throwing mud on the Stars and Stripes and cheering for ‘hat one-legged ho. thief Santa Anna! Anything to seek out something foolish among your own people!” “Don’t have to seek far, sometimes, general,” murmured Crailey, from the depths of the best chair in the club, whereupon Trumble, not trusting him- self to answer, went out to the street. And yet, before that same evening was over, the general had shed honest tears of admiration and pity for Crailey Gray; and Miss Betty saw her Incroy- able again, for that night (the second S \§7 r/ \ after the Caréwe dance) Rouen beheld the great warehouse fire. CHAPTER V. NERO NOT THE LAST VIOLINIST OF HIS KIND. Miss Carewe was at her desk writ- ing to Sister Cecilia, whom she most loved of all the world, when the bells startled her with their sudden clangor. The quill dropped from her hand; she started to her feet, wide-eyed, not un- derstanding; while the whole town, drowsing peacefully a moment ago, re- sounded immediately with a loud con- fusion. She ran to the front door and looked out, her heart beating wildly. The western sky was touched with a soft rose color, which quickly became a warm glow, fluctuated, and, in the in- stant, shot up like the coming of a full Aurora. Then through the brokén foli- age of the tree tops could be seen the orange curis of flames, three quarters of a mile away though they were. People calling loudly that “it was Ca- rewe's warehouses,” were running down the street. From the stable, old Nel- son, on her father's best horse, came galloping, and seeing the white figure in the ‘doorway, cried out in a quaver- ing voice, without checking his steed: ‘1 goin’ tell yo’ pa, Miss Betty; he in de kentry on lan’ bus'ness. Go back in de house, Missy!" The other servants, like ragged sketches in the night, flitted by, with excited ejaculations, to jpin the run- ners, and Miss Betty followed them across the dew-strewn turf in her light slippers, but at the gate she stopped. From up the street came the sound of a bell, smaller thard those of the churches and court house, yet one that outdid all others in the madness of its appeal to clear the way. It was borne along by what seemed at flrst an in- definite black mass, but which— as the Aurora grew keener, produced even here a faint, yellow twiligkt—resolved itself into a mob of hearsely shouting men and boys, who were running and tugging at ropes, which drew along three extraordinary vehicles. They came rapidly down the street and passed Miss Betty with a hubbub and din beyond all understanding; one line of men, most of them in red shirts and oll-cloth he!mets, at a dead run with the hose cart; a second line with the hand engine; the third dragging the ladder wagon. One man was riding, a tall, straight gentleman in evening clothes, and without a hat, Who stood precariously in the hose cart, calling in an annoyed tone through a brazen trum- pet. Miss Betty recognized him at once; it was he who caught her kitten; and she thought that if she had been Fanchon Bareaud she must have screamed a warning, for his balance appeared a thing of mere luck, and, if he fell, he would be trampled under foot and probably run over by the en- gine. But, happily "(she remembered) she was not Fanchon Bareaud! Before, behind,.and beside the de- partment, raced a throng of boys, wild with the joy experienced by their spe- cles when property is being handsomely destroyed; after them came panting women, holding their sides and gasping with the effort to keep up with the fly- ing procession. Mijss Betty trembled, for she had never seen the like in her life; she stood close to the hedge and let them go by; then she turned in after them and ran like a fleet young deer. She was going to the fire. Over all the uproar could be heard the angry voice through the trumpet, calling the turns of the streets to the men in the van, upbraiding them and those of the other two companies im- partially; and few of his hearers de- nied the chief his right to express some chagrin; since the department (organized a half year, hard drilled, and this its first fire worth the name) was late on account of the refusal of the members to move until they had donned their new uniforms: for the uniforms had arrived from Philadel- phia two months ago, and to-night of- fered the first opportunity to display them in public. . “Hail WVanrevel!” panted Tapping- ham Marsh to Eugene Madrillon, as the two, running in the van of the hose company, splattered through a mud- puddle. “You'd think he was Carewe’s only son and heir-instead of his worst enemy. Hark to the man!” “I'd let it burn, if I were he,” re- turned the other. “It was all Crailey's fault,” said Tap- pingham. swinging an arm free to wipe the spattered mud from his face. “He swore he wouldn't budge without his uniform, and the rest only backed him up; that was all. Crailey and Carewe could better afford to lose his shanties than the overworked department its first chance to look beautiful and earn- ést. Tom asked him why he didn’t send for a fiddle,” Marsh finished with a chuckle. “Carewe might afford to lose a little, even a warehouse or two, if only out of what he’s taken from Crailey and the rest of us, these three years!” “Taken from Vanrevel, you mean. ‘Who doesn’t know where Crailey’s— Here's Main street; lock out for the turn!” They swung out of the thick shadows of Carewe street into full view of the fire, and the.. faces were illuminated as by sunrise. The warehouses stood on the river bank, at the foot of the street, just south of the new covered bridge. There were four of them, huge, baresided buildings; the two nearer the bridge of brick, the others of wocd, and all of them rich with stores of every kind of river merchandise and costly freight; furniture that had voyaged from New England down the long coast, across the Mexican gulf, through the flat Delta and had made the winding journey up the great river a thousand miles, and almost a thousand more, following the greater and lesser tributaries; cloth from Connecticut that had been sold in Philadefphia, then carried cver moun- tains and through forests by steam, by canal, by stage, and six-mule freight wagons, to Pittsburg, down the Ohio, and lhe}lce up to Rouen on the packet; Tennessee cotton, on its way to Massa- chusetts and Rhode Island spindles, lay there beside huge mounds of raw wool from Tllinois, ready to be fed to the Rouen mill; dates and nuts from the Caribbean Sea; lemons from groves of the faraway tropies;. cigars from the Antilles; tobacco from Virginia and Kentucky; most precious of all, the great granary of .the farmers’ wheat from the level flelds at home; and all the rich stores and the houses that held them, as well as the wharves upon which they had been landed, and the steamers that brought them up the Rouen River belonged to Robert Ca- rewe. That it was*her father’s property which was \mperiled attested to the justification of Miss Betty in running to a fire; and as she followed the crowd into Main street, she felt a not un- pleasant proprietary , interest in the spectacle. Very opposite sensations animated the breast of the man with the trumpet. who was more acutely conscious than any other that these were Robert Carewe's possessions which were burning so handsomely. Nor was he the only one among the firemen who ground his teeth over the folly of the umiforms; for mow they could plainly see the ruin wrought, the devastation threatemed. The two up- per stories of the southernmost ware- house had swathed themselves in one great flame; the building next on the north, also of frame, was smoking heavily; and there was a wind from the southwest, which, continuing with the fire unchecked, threatened the town itself. There was work for the volunteer Wrigade that night. “They came down Main street with a rush, the “gure of their chief swaying over them on his high perch. while their shouting was drowned In the lcuder roar of greeting from the erqwd, into which they plunged as a diver into the water, swirls and eddies of peo- ple marking the wake. A moment later a section of the roof of the burning warehouse fell in, with a sonorous and reverberating crash. The engine company ran the force pump out to the end of one of the low wharves; two lines of pipe were at- tached; two rows of men mounted the planks for the pumpers. and,” at the word ¢f command, began the up and down of the hand machine with ad- mirable vim. Nothing happened: the water did not come: something ap- peared to be wrong with the mechan- ism. As every ome felt the erucial need of haste, nothing could have been more natural than that all the members of the engine company should simultane- ously endeavor to repair the def therefore ensued upon the spot a spe- cles of riot which put the engine out of its sphere of usefulness. In the meantime fifty or sixty men and boys who ran with the machine, but who had no place in their opera- tion, being the bucket brigade, had fogmed a line and were throwing large pails of water in the general direction of the southernmost warehouse, which it was now impossible to save; while the gentlemen of the heok and ladder company, abandoning their wagons, and armed with axes, heroically as- saulted the big door of the granary, the second building. whence they were driven by the exasperated ¢hief, who informed them that the only way to save the wheat was to save the build- ing. Cralley Gray, one of the berated axemen, remained by the shattered door after the others had gome, and, struck by a suden thought, set his hand upon the iron latch and opened the door by this simple process. It was not locked. Crailey leaned against the casement and laughed with his whole sofil and body. Meanwhile, by dint of shouting in men's ears when near them, through the trumpet when distant, tearing axes from their hands, impericusly gesticu- lating to subordinate commanders, and lingering in no one spot for more than a second, Mr. Vanrevel reduced his forces to a semblance of order in a remarka- bly short time, considering the confu- sion into which they had fallen. The space between the burning ware- house ard that next it was not more than fifty feet in width, but fifty feet so hot no one took thought of entering there; an‘area as discomforting in ap- pearance as it was beautiful with the thick rain of sparks and firebrands that fell upon it. But the chief had decided that this space must be occupied, and more; must be held, since it was the only point of defense for the second warehouse. The roof of this building would burn, which would mean the de- struction of the warehouse, unless it could be mounted, because the streams of water could not play upon it from the ground, nor, from the ladders, do much more than v .t the projecting eaves. Tt was a gable roof, the eaves twenty feet lower on the south side than on the north. where the ladders could not hope to reach them. Vanrevel swung his line of bucketeers round to throw water, not upon the flames, but upon the ladder men. Miss Carewe stood in the crowd upon the opvosite side «f the broad street. Even there her cheeks® were uncom- fortably hot, and sometimes she had to brush a spatk from her shoulder, though she was too much excited to mind this. She was watching the beau- tiful flery furnace between the north wall of the burning warehouse and the south wall-of its neighbor, the fifty feet brilliant and misty with vaporous rose- coler, dotted with the myriad red stars. her eyes shining with the reflection of their fler€e beauty. She saw how the vapors moved there, like men walking infire, and she was vaguely recalling Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. when, over the silhouetted heads of the crowd before her, a long black ladder rose, wobbled, tilted crazily, then lame- ly advanced and ranged itself against the south wall of the second warehouse, its top rung striking ten feet shogt of the eaves. .She hoped that no one had any notion of mounting that ladder. (Continued Next Sunday.) =\ N )