“The wind has changed, and the fire is awful, and I can’t help it,” sounded Miss Smalley’s voice, meek and deprecating, through the keyhole, at which she had listened till she had heard Bel moving.

Bel lit the gas, and then went out into the passage.

Flakes of fire were coming down over the roofs into the Place itself.

The great rush and blaze were all this way, now.  They were right under the storm of it.

Aunt Blin woke up.

“What is it?” she asked, excitedly.  “Is it begun again?  Is it coming?” And before Bel could stop her, she was out on the entry floor with her bare feet.

A floating cinder fell and struck the sash.

“We must be dressed!  We must pack up!  Make haste, Bel!  Where’s Bartholomew?”

Making a movement, hurriedly, to go back across her own room, Miss Bree turned faint and giddy, and fell headlong.

They got her into bed again, and brought her to.  But with circulation and consciousness, came the rush of fever.  In half an hour she was in a burning heat, wandering and crying out deliriously.

“O what shall we do?  We must have a doctor.  She’ll die!” cried Bel.

“If I dared to go up and call Mr. Sparrow?” said the spinster, timidly.

Her thought reverted as instantly to Mr. Sparrow, and yet with the same conscious shyness, as if she had been eighteen, and the poor old watchmaker twenty-one.  Because, you see, she was a woman; and she had but been a woman the longer, and her woman’s heart grown tenderer and shyer, in its unlived life, that she was four and fifty, and not eighteen.  There are three times eighteen in four and fifty.

“O, Mr. Sparrow isn’t any good!” cried Bel, impetuously.  “If you wouldn’t mind seeing whether Mr. Hewland is up-stairs?”

Miss Smalley did not mind that at all; and though numbly aggrieved at the reflection upon Mr. Sparrow, went up and knocked.

Bel heard Morris Hewland’s spring upon the floor, and his voice, as he asked the matter.  Heavy with fatigue, he had not roused till now.

As he came down, five minutes later, and Bel Bree met him at the door, the gas suddenly went out, and they stood, except for the flame outside, in darkness.

In house and street it was the same.  Miss Smalley called out that it was so.  “The stable light is gone,” she said.  “Yes,—­and the lights down Tremont Street.”

Then that fearful robe of fire, thick sown with spangling cinders, seemed sweeping against the window panes.

Only that terrible light over all the town.

“O, what does it mean?” said Bel.

“It is Chicago over again,” the young man answered her, with a grave dismay in his voice.

“See there,—­and there!” said Miss Smalley, at the window.  “People are up, lighting candles.”

“But Aunt Blin is sick!” said Bel.  “We must take care of her.  What shall we do?”