It surged up and up, as if it would over-boil the very stars themselves.  It swayed to right,—­to left; growing in an awful bulk and intensity, without changing much its place, to their eyes, where they stood.  On the tops of the high Apartment Hotel, and all the flat-roofed houses in Hero and Pilgrim streets, were men and women gazing.  Their faces, which could not have been discerned in the daylight, shone distinct in this preternatural illumination.  Their voices sounded now and then, against the yet distant hum and crackle of the conflagration, upon the otherwise still air.  The rush had, for a while, gone by.  The streets in this quarter were empty.

Grand and terrible as the sight was to them in Leicester Place, they could know or imagine little of what the fire was really doing.

“It backs against the wind,” they heard one man say upon the stable-roof.

They could not resist opening the window, just a little, now and then, to listen; though Bel would instantly pull Aunt Blin away, and then they would put it down.  Poor Aunt Blin’s nose grew very cold, though she did not know it.  Her nose was little and sensitive.  It is not the big noses that feel the cold the most.  Aunt Blin took cold through her face and her feet; and these the dressing-gown, and the waterproof, and the comforter, did not protect.

“It must have spread among those crowded houses in Kingston and South streets,” Aunt Blin said; and as she spoke, her poor old “ornaments” chattered.

“Aunt Blin, you shall come down, and take something hot, and go to bed!” exclaimed Bel, peremptorily.  “We can’t stay here all night.  Mr. Sparrow will be back,—­and everybody.  I think the fire is going down.  It’s pretty still now.  We’ve seen it all.  Come!”

They had never a thought, any of them, of more than a block or so, burning.  Of course the firemen would put it out.  They always did.

“See!  See!” cried the landlady.  “O my sakes and sorrows!”

A huge, volcanic column of glittering sparks—­of great flaming fragments—­shot up and soared broad and terrible into the deep sky.  A long, magnificent, shimmering, scintillant train—­fire spangled with fire—­swept southward like the tail of a comet, that had at last swooped down and wrapped the earth.

“The roofs have fallen in,” said innocent old Miss Smalley.

“That will be the last.  Now they will stop it,” said Bel.  “Come, Auntie!”

And after midnight, for an hour or more, the house, with the five women in it, hushed.  Aunt Blin took some hot Jamaica ginger, and Bel filled a jug with boiling water, wrapped it in flannel, and tucked it into the bed at her feet.  Then she gave her a spoonful of her cough-mixture, took off her own clothes, and lay down.

Still the great fire roared, and put out the stars.  Still the room was red with the light of it.  Aunt Blin fell asleep.

Bel lay and listened, and wondered.  She would not move to get up and look again, lest she should rouse her aunt.  Suddenly, she heard the boom of a great explosion.  She started up.