The Two Vanrevels

dden clangor. The quill dropped from her hand; she started to her feet, wide-eyed, not understanding; while the whole town, drowsing pe

nd, in the instant, shot up like the coming of a full Aurora. Then through the broken foliage of th

From the stable, old Nelson, on her father's best horse, came galloping, and seeing the

, he in de kentry on lan' bus'ne

cited ejaculations, to join the runners, and Miss Betty followed them acro

which drew along three extraordinary vehicles. They came rapidly down the street and passed Miss Betty with a hubbub and din beyond all understanding; one line of men, most of them in red shirts and oil-cloth helmets, at a dead run with the hose-cart; a second line with the hand-engine; the third dragging the ladder-wagon. One man was riding, a tall, straight gentleman in evening clothes and without a hat, who stood preca

nced by their species when property is being handsomely destroyed; after them came panting w

e stood close to the hedge and let them go by; then she turned in af

ew of his hearers denied the chief his right to express some chagrin; since the Department (organized a half-year, hard-drilled, and this its first fire worth the name) was late on account of the ref

g in the van of the "Hose Company," splattered through a mud-puddle. "You'd thin

if I were he," r

out his uniform, and the rest only backed him up; that was all. Crailey said Carewe could better afford to lose his shanties than the overwor

ehouse or two, if only out of what he's taken fro

doesn't know where Crailey's-Here's

ewe Street into full view of the fire, and

t river a thousand miles, and almost a thousand more, following the greater and lesser tributaries; cloth from Connecticut that had been sold in Philadelphia, then carried over mountains and through forests by steam, by canal, by stage, and six-mule freight-wagons, to Pittsburg, down the Ohio, and thence up to Rouen on the packet; Tennessee cotton, on its way to Massachusetts and Rhode Island spindles, lay there beside huge mounds of raw wool from Illinois,

was more acutely conscious than any other that these were Robert Carewe's possessions which were burning so handsomely. Nor was he the only one among the firemen who ground his teeth over the folly of the uniforms; for now they could plainly see the ruin being wrought, the devastation threatened. The two upper

owned in the louder roar of greeting from the crowd, into which they plunged as a diver into the water, swirls and eddies of peopl

d-down of the hand-machine with admirable vim. Nothing happened; the water did not come; something appeared to be wrong with the mechanism. As everyone felt the crucial need of haste, nothing could have been more

gentlemen of the "Hook-and-Ladder Company," abandoning their wagons, and armed with axes, heroically assaulted the big door of the granary, the second building, whence they were driven by the exasperated chief, who informed them that the only way to save the wheat was to save the building. Craile

s, imperiously gesticulating to subordinate commanders, and lingering in no one spot for more than a second, Mr. Vanrevel r

hat this space must be occupied, and more: must be held, since it was the only point of defence for the second warehouse. The roof of this building would burn, which would mean the destruction of the warehouse, unless it could be mounted, because the streams of water could not play upon it from the ground

use and the south wall of its neighbor, the fifty feet brilliant and misty with vaporous rose-color, dotted with the myriad red stars, her eyes shining with the reflection of their fierce beauty. She saw how the vapors moved there, like men walking in fire, and she was vaguely recalling Shadrach, Meshach, and Abe

and the crowd became almost silent, as the figure, climbing slowly drew up above their heads. Two or three rungs beneath, came a second-a man in helmet and uniform. The clothes of both men, drenched by

et rested on the third rung from the top; here he turned, setting his back to the wall, lifted the grappling-ladder high over his head so that it rested against the eaves above him, and brought it down sharply, fast

hese questionable youths, almost without noting her action in mounting thither, so strained was the concentration of her attention upon the figure high up in the rose-glow against the warehouse wall. The man, surely, surely, was not going to trust himself to that bit of wood

and tried it with his weight; the iron hooks bit deeper into the roof; they held. He swung himself out into the air with nothing beneath him, caught the rung under his knee, and for a moment hung there while the crowd withheld from breathing; then a cloud of smoke, swirling that wa

make them understand, below, what would happen to the "Engine Company" in case the water was not sent through the lines directly; and what he

and, for the lack of the tardy water, began to use it as a flail upon the firebrands and little flames about him; the sheer desperate best of a man in a rage, doing what he could when others failed him. Showers of sparks fell upon him; the smoke was rising everywhere from the roof and the walls below; and, growing denser and de

d should come that the force-pump had been repaired; but the people thought that he waited because he was afraid to trust himself to the gra

was with the flying sparks; and, a large brand dropping upon his helmet, he threw up his hand to dislodge it and lost the helmet.