She stopped for no outer apparel, however, but dashed out upon the stone portico, drawing the door shut behind her.  That act alone saved the school from panic; for it she had left the door ajar, when the girls filed out into the entrance hall from the dining room some of them would have been sure to see the growing red glow on the second floor of the West Dormitory.

To Ruth the fire seemed to be filling the room in which it had apparently started.  There was no smoke as yet; but the flames leaped higher and higher, while the illumination grew frightfully.

A spark of light coming into being at the far end of the campus near the East Dormitory, showed Ruth where Tony Foyle then was.  He was not likely to see the fire as yet, for in lighting the campus lamps he followed a route that kept his back to the West Dormitory until he turned to come back.

Like an arrow from the bow the young girl ran toward the distant gardener.  She took the steps of the little Italian garden in the center of the campus in two flying leaps, passed the marble maiden at the fountain, and bounded up to the level of the campus path again without stopping.

“Tony!  Oh, Tony!” she called breathlessly.

“Shure now, phat’s the matter widyer?” returned the old Irishman, querulously.  “Phy! ’tis Miss Ruth, so ut is.  Phativer do be the trouble, me darlin’?”

He was very fond of Ruth and would have done anything in his power for her.  So at once Tony was exercised by her appearance.

“Phativer is the matter?” he repeated.

“Fire!” blurted out Ruth, able at last to speak.  The keen night air had seemed for the moment fairly to congest her lungs and render her speechless and breathless.

“That’s that?” cried Tony. “‘Fire,’ says you?  An’ where is there fire save in the furnaces and the big range in the kitchen——­”

He had turned, and the red glare from the room on the second floor of the West Dormitory came into his view.

“There it is!” gasped Ruth, and just then the tinkle of breaking glass betrayed the fact that the heat of the flames was bursting the panes of the window.

“Fur the love of——­Begorra!  I’ll git the hose-cart, an’ rouse herself an’ the gals in the kitchen——­”

Poor Tony, so wildly excited that he dropped the little “dhudeen” he was smoking and did not notice that he stepped on it, galloped away on rheumatic legs.  At this hour there was no man on the premises but the little old Irishman, who cared for the furnaces until the fireman and engineer came on duty at seven in the morning.

Ruth was quite sure that neither Tony nor “herself” (by this name he meant Mrs. Foyle, the cook) or any of the kitchen girls, could do a thing towards extinguishing the fire.  But she remembered that Miss Scrimp, the matron, must be in the threatened building, and the girl dashed across the intervening space and in at the door.