Thirteen years have passed since, but it is all to me as if it had happened yesterday, the clanging of the fire-bells, the hoarse shouts of the firemen, the wild rush and terror of the streets; then the great hush that fell upon the crowd; the sea of upturned faces with the fire glow upon it; and there, against the background of black smoke that poured from roof and attic, the boy clinging to the narrow ledge so far up that it seemed humanly impossible that help could ever come.

But even then it was coming. Up from the street, while the crew of the truck-company were labouring with the heavy extension ladder that at its longest stretch was many feet too short, crept four men upon long slender poles with crossbars, iron-hooked at the end. Standing in one window, they reached up and thrust the hook through the next one above, then mounted a storey higher. Again the crash of glass, and again the dizzy ascent. Straight up the wall they crept, looking like human flies on the ceiling, and clinging as close, never resting, reaching one recess only to set out for the next; nearer and nearer in the race for life, until but a single span separated the foremost from the boy.