“Well, for a minute the crowd kep’ still, kind ‘a holdin’ its breath, you understan’, till the Prof.’d come back with the other kid—­and holdin’ it and holdin’ it till the fire gits brighter and brighter through the window—­and—­nothin’ happens, you understan’—­just the fire keeps on gittin’ busy.  Honest, I begun to feel shaky, but then up comes one of these day-after-to-morrow fire-departments, like they have in them towns, with some fine painted ladders and a nice new hose-cart, and there was great doings with these Silases screamin’ to each other a foot away through their fire-trumpets, only the stairs had been ablaze ever since the Prof. got up ’em, and before any one does anything the whole inside caves in and the blaze goes way up to the sky.

“Well, of course, that settles it, you understan’—­about the little Kelly and the Prof.  We drags the original Kelly away to a drug-store on the corner of the next block, where they was workin’ over the kid Prof. saved—­it was Patsy—­and Kelly was crazy; but the Doc. was bringin’ the kid around all right, when one of the Miss Deveres, she has to come nutty all to once—­say, she sounded like the parrot-house in Central Park, laughin’ till you’d think she’d bust, only it sounded like she was cryin’ at the same time, and screamin’ out at the top of her voice, ’Oh, he looked so damned funny with his mus-tache burned off!  Oh, he looked so damned funny with his mus-tache burned off!’—­way up high like that, over and over.  Well, so she has to be held down till the Doc. jabs her arm full of knockouts.  Honest, I needed the dope myself for fair by that time, what with the lady bein’ that way I’m ‘a tellin’ you, and Kelly, the crazy Irishman—­I could hear him off in one corner givin’ his reg’ler stunt about his friend, O’Houlihan, lately landed and lookin’ for work, comes to a sausage factory and goes up to the boss and says, ’Begobs!’—­you know the old gag—­say, I run out in the snow and looked over to the crowd around the fire and thought of Prof. pokin’ around in that dressin’-room for Kelly’s other kid, when he might ’a jumped after he got the first one, and, say, this is no kid—­first thing I knew I begin to bawl like a baby.

“Well, as I was sayin’, there I am and all I can see through the fog is one ’a these here big lighted signs down the street with ‘George’s Place’ on it, and a pitcher of a big glass of beer.  Me to George’s, at once.  When Levy himself finds me there, about daylight, I’m tryin’ to tell a gang of Silases how it all happened and chokin’ up every time so’s I have to have another.

“Well, of course, we break up next day.  Kelly tells me, after he gits right again, that little Patsy was saved by havin’ one ’a these here scapulars on—­he shows it to me hanging around the kid’s neck, inside his clothes.  He says little Joseph must ’a left his off, or he’d ‘a’ been saved, too.  He showed me a piece in one ’a these little religious books that says there was nothing annoyed the devil like a scapular—­that a man can’t be burned or done dirt to in no way if he wears one.  I says it’s a pity the Prof. didn’t have one on, but Kelly says they won’t work for Protestants.  But I don’t know—­I never purtended to be good on these propositions of religious matters.  And there wasn’t any chance of findin’ the kid to prove if Kelly had it right or not.