Before returning to his quarters the colonel desired to know something of the origin of the fire.  There was testimony enough and to spare.  Every woman in Sudsville had a theory to express, and was eager to be heard at once and to the exclusion of all others.  It was not until he had summarily ordered them to go to their homes and not come near him that the colonel managed to get a clear statement from some of the men.

Clancy had been away all the evening, drinking as usual, and Mrs. Clancy was searching about Sudsville as much for sympathy and listeners as for him.  Little Kate, who knew her father’s haunts, had guided him home, and was striving to get him to his little sleeping-corner before her mother’s return, when in his drunken helplessness he fell against the table, overturning the kerosene lamp, and the curtains were all aflame in an instant.  It was just after taps—­or ten o’clock—­when Kate’s shrieks aroused the inmates of Sudsville and started the cry of “Fire.”  The flimsy structure of pine boards burned like so much tinder, and the child and her stupefied father had been dragged forth only in time to save their lives.  The little one, after giving the alarm, had rushed again into the house and was tugging at his senseless form when rescue came for both,—­none too soon.  As for Mrs. Clancy, at the first note of danger she had rushed screaming to the spot, but only in time to see the whole interior ablaze and to howl frantically for some man to save her money,—­it was all in the green box under the bed.  For husband and child she had for the moment no thought.  They were safely out of the fire by the time she got there, and she screamed and fought like a fury against the men who held her back when she would have plunged into the midst of it.  It took but a minute for one or two men to burst through the flimsy wall with axes, to rescue the burning box and knock off the lid.  It was a sight to see when the contents were handed to her.  She knelt, wept, prayed, counted over bill after bill of smoking, steaming greenbacks, until suddenly recalled to her senses by the eager curiosity and the remarks of some of her fellow-women.  That she kept money and a good deal of it in her quarters had long been suspected and as fiercely denied; but no one had dreamed of such a sum as was revealed.  In her frenzy she had shrieked that the savings of her lifetime were burning,—­that there was over three thousand dollars in the box; but she hid her treasure and gasped and stammered and swore she was talking “wild-like.”  “They was nothing but twos and wans,” she vowed; yet there were women there who declared that they had seen tens and twenties as she hurried them through her trembling fingers, and Sudsville gossiped and talked for two hours after she was led away, still moaning and shivering, to the bedside of poor Clancy, who was the miserable cause of it all.  The colonel listened to the stories with such patience as could be accorded to witnesses who desired to give prominence to their personal exploits in subduing the flames and rescuing life and property.  It was not until he and the group of officers with him had been engaged some moments in taking testimony that something was elicited which caused a new sensation.