excited, for he shouted at the top of his lungs that the east end factory was on fire, with a dozen operators cut off from the stairs and elevators, and that his father, who was foreman, was begging on all sides for volunteers to rescue the people from the top story.  In the twinkling of an eye Hock was off again with crowds of running men and boys; the fire engines went clanging past with the rattle and roar of galloping horses and shouting men.  Never had Archie Anderson felt his frailty as he felt it at this moment.  The very news made him almost faint, but he started to run with the crowd until his shortening breath and incessant coughing compelled him to return home, where he flung himself down on the doorstep, burying his throbbing forehead in his hands and saying:  “Oh!  I’m no good!  I can never hope to be a man!  I’m not even a boy!  I seem to myself like a baby!”

Late at night his father and brothers returned, all begrimed with soot and ashes.  They had worked valiantly with the firemen and rescuers, saving life after life.  But with all their courage and pluck they could not save big Tom Morris, who perished in the flames just because he insisted upon others and weaker ones being saved first.

For days the town was plunged in gloom.  Everyone liked Tom Morris, and everyone’s heart ached for his little widow and her three small children, left penniless.  Then the only pleasant thing in connection with the disaster occurred.  The kindly visitors at the summer hotels began getting up a huge benefit concert, the proceeds of which were to be presented to Mrs. Tom and her babies.  Hock heard of it first—­nothing ever escaped his lynx-like ears.  Astride the window-sill he communicated his gossip to Archie something in this fashion: 

“Say, Arch, they’re going to have the best performance.  Miss Van Alstine from New York is going to sing, and some long-haired fellow at one of the hotels is going to play the piano—­they say he’s great; and, oh! say, Arch, did you ever hear of a great fiddler named Ventnor?”

“Only the world-renowned Ventnor,” said Archie.  “Why do you ask, Hock?”

“Well, he’s the one!  ‘Greatest on earth,’ they say.  Gets thousands of dollars every night he fiddles.  He’s staying at the Lake View Hotel, and—­”

“Ventnor here!” fairly screamed Archie.  “The great Ventnor!  Oh, Hock, is he going to play?”

“Yes, he is!” said Hock, smacking his lips together with glee that something had at last taken Archie out of himself and made him forget his frailty, if only for a moment, “Yes, siree,” continued Hock.  “He’s going to play three times.  Heard him say so myself when they asked him on the beach this morning.  He speaks the tanglest-legged English you ever heard.  He said, ‘Me, I holiday; me, I not blay when I holiday.’  Then a batch of ladies tried to explain things to him, and when his Russian-Italian-French brain got around things, he up with his hands and ran them through his long grey hair and wagged his head, and said, ’Me, I understand!  Me, I don’t blay money when I holiday, but me, I blay for unfortunate beeples.  I blay dree times.’  Oh, it was funny, Arch!”