“Ah?  The man had to be held, poor fellow!  It was—­it was—­” Again the doctor stopped, unable to go on.  But after a few seconds he began more briskly:  “Well!  The mill was connected with this house, you know, by a little bridge, from the tank floor of the mill to the roof.  No one had thought of it, because every one supposed that there was no one in the mill.  Before the crowd had fairly seen that there were children caged up there, they left the window, and not a minute later we saw them come up the trap-door by the tank.  Lord, how every one yelled.”

“They’d thought of it, the darlings!” half sobbed Mrs. Arbuthnot.

“No, they’d never have thought of it—­too terrified, poor little things.  No.  We all saw that there was some one—­a woman—­with them hurrying them along.  I was helping hold the mother or I might have thought it was the mother.  They scampered across that bridge like little squirrels, the woman with the baby last.  By that time the mill was roaring like a furnace behind them, and the bridge itself burst into flames at the mill end.  She—­the woman—­must have felt it tottering, for she flung herself the last few feet—­but she couldn’t make it.  She threw the baby, by some lucky accident, for she couldn’t have known what she was doing, safe to the others, and caught at the rail, but the whole thing gave way and came down....  I got there about the first—­she’d only fallen some dozen feet, you know, on the flat roof of the kitchen, but she was all smashed up, poor little girl.  We carried her into the housekeeper’s room—­and then I saw that it was little Miss Carter—­your Dancing Girl, Ju!”

“Jim!  Dead?”

“Oh, no!  I don’t think she’ll die.  She’s badly burned, of course—­ face and hands especially—­but it’s the spine I’m afraid for.  We can tell better to-morrow.  We made her as comfortable as we could.  I gave her something that’ll make her sleep.  Her mother’s with her.  But I’m afraid her dancing days are over.”

“Think of it—­little Miss Carter!” Julie’s voice sounded dazed.

“But, Jim,” Ann said, “what was she doing in the mill?”

“Why, that’s the point,” he said.  “She wasn’t there when the fire started.  She was simply one of the crowd.  But when she heard that the children were there, she ran to the back of the mill, where there was a straight up-and-down ladder built against the wall outside, so that the tank could be reached that way.  She went up it like a flash—­says she never thought of asking any one else to go.  She broke a window and climbed in—­she says the floor was hot to her feet then—­and she and the kids ran up the inside flight to the trap-door.  They obeyed her like little soldiers!  But the bridge side of the mill was the side the fire was on, and the wood was rotten, you know—­almost explosive.  Half a minute later and they couldn’t have made it at all.”

“How do you account for such courage in a girl like that?” marvelled Julie.