It was nearly nine o'clock in the evening when there came a ring at the Maitlands' doorbell. It had not been the easiest waiting in the world, that of the two women in the half-deserted apartment building through the long night and longer day. Helen would have preferred to go out of doors, feeling that there she could see and follow, at a distance at least, the progress of the conflagration; but Mrs. Maitland in a strange and unlooked-for obstinacy absolutely declined to leave the apartment or to permit her daughter to do so.

"I don't know anything about fires, but if this one starts in this direction I want to be here, and not away somewhere," she repeated to her daughter's urging; nor could she be induced to take any other viewpoint. So in their rooms they remained, and their only news from without was transmitted to them from the servants and visitors to the building. The telephone was out of commission, and Helen felt as though she were marooned in full sight of a civilization with which she could not communicate and which afforded her no benefits.

It had been past one o'clock in the morning when Smith had brought her home from the fire. Long after that the excitement had kept her awake; but she had fallen asleep at last, and wakened again only when it was broad day. It was, however, to be one of the longest days in her calendar, and by noon she felt as though she had been waiting for years in expectation of she did not know what. She tried to read, but found it impossible to fix her attention on the book. She began to run over some operatic scores on the piano, but the sound seemed to ring so oddly that she gave up this also. Between her mother and herself conversation languished—and thus the slow hours wore on. She could not but think how infinitely more desirable it was to be out in the streets, even though that might mean a certain amount of physical danger, than to remain in unsatisfactory helplessness thus. If it be woman's heritage to wait, that heritage certainly did not appeal to Helen on this occasion. It is doubtful if it ever appeals to any one.

Only two incidents of relief had marked the passage of the dragging hours. The first was when Smith had called, in the morning, to leave his suitcase and to promise to return in case the fire should come dangerously near; the second was a visit from Mr. Silas Osgood. This latter call occurred in the middle of the afternoon, when the suspense of doing nothing at all had become almost intolerable and the nerves of both women had come almost to the snapping point, and they both consequently greeted him with even more than their usual affection.

"I'm so glad you've come, Uncle Silas, I can hardly speak!" Helen said; and her mother's welcome, while somewhat less extreme in expression, was equally sincere.

"I tried to get you on the telephone, but I couldn't, so I thought I'd better come and see how you were getting on," Mr. Osgood explained. "I'm glad you're all right. This is a fearful thing, a terrible business! Nobody knows where it may end."

"Tell us about it—everything," the girl demanded. "We have really heard nothing all day. What we have heard has been chiefly what we could learn from the servants, and they understand so little of what is actually happening."

"I have been out near the Public Gardens," said her uncle; "and though I couldn't see much, I probably could see almost as much as though I had been a good deal nearer. On the whole, things seem very favorable. I would not go so far as to say that the end is in sight; but in a certain sense the fire is under control, and I believe that the worst is over at last."

"How far does it extend now?"

"Well, they have managed to prevent its getting across Tremont Street; in fact, they have held it on both east and west. You see, most of the railroad yards below the South Station were cleared in time, and that left little or no fuel on the east side. The fire now, instead of having a clean sweep from the Common to the Channel, has a path barely half that width. It is now as far south as Oak Street, and Hollis Street west of that."

"Dear me! Has the good old Hollis Theater gone, then?"

"I don't see how it could very well have escaped. But it wasn't a very attractive theater, though, anyway. Why do you ask about it? They have needed a new building there for a long time."

"Yes—but some of the happiest evenings I have ever had were there. It isn't the upholstery of the seats or the mural decorations or what the theater looks like, but what you hear there. Don't you think that a theater gets to retain some of its traditions and its greatest associations? It sounds as though I were an old woman; but every time I go there, I seem to feel that the theater remembers, just as I do, the thrills that its walls have known."

"Would you rather it had been left to be torn down, then?" inquired her uncle, with a smile.

"Well, possibly not. That would be worse than this. Perhaps it is better to 'give her to the God of Storms,' after all."

"Perhaps," agreed Mr. Osgood, gently.

For a half an hour longer they talked, and he told them as much as he knew of what already had been destroyed, and what the final reckoning would unclose. He spoke as cheerfully as he could, but Helen, watching him closely, saw that back of this there was a profound sadness.

"Is it so very terrible, Uncle Silas?" she asked at last, laying her hand affectionately on his sleeve.

"Very. It is as bad as it could be, my child," he answered. "Bad for Boston—bad for us all. I have been through this sort of calamity before; but that was many years ago. I did not mind it so much when I was a young man. It is different now."

"But surely the city can survive it, can it not?"

"Yes—the property loss, no doubt; and I am glad to say that very few lives have been lost. But it is a fearful catastrophe. The city is crippled—shaken to its very heart! Think of the hundreds of families driven into the streets, the businesses wrecked, the uncountable number of men left without employment, even if the fire cease at once!"

A new idea had come to Helen.

"What difference will it make to Silas Osgood and Company?" she asked, with some hesitation. "It won't injure your firm, will it?"

"Oh, to a certain extent, temporarily, but nothing to be troubled about. Of course the local agent does not have to pay any part of his companies' losses. But—" he paused.

"But what?" asked the girl.

"Well, I have been in the business so long, my dear, that I have come to look at this sort of thing more from the standpoint of my companies than my own. I am ashamed—yes, sorry and ashamed—to have my city hurt my companies so sorely."

"But you couldn't have helped it—it isn't your fault," said Mrs.
Maitland, somewhat mystified, but guessing a little of what he felt.

"No," said Mr. Osgood, slowly; "I couldn't have helped it. But if it had to happen in Boston, I'm sorry it didn't wait until I was through."

"Then I hope it would be never!" Helen said, a little incoherently; but the point was plain.

"On the business side there is only one feature that cheers me," continued Mr. Osgood, "and that is the fact that my old friend James Wintermuth and his company, the Guardian of New York, are practically out of it all."

"How do you mean—out of it?" Helen's mother asked.

"You see, the Guardian, when it had to leave my office, lost all its local business. A good deal of it was naturally in this very part of the city which is burning. They undoubtedly have some term lines still in force,—policies written for three or five years,—but not many. They will escape with a very light loss indeed—whereas two years ago this conflagration would have involved them for an amount such as not many companies would care to meet."

"Then there must be other companies now who will lose more in this fire than they can pay?"

"Without a doubt. There has never been a fire of this magnitude that has not absolutely ruined many of the smaller companies. It takes either a very strong or a very conservative insurance company to weather a great conflagration. After each of our big city fires in this country many and many a company has found that after it paid its losses there would be nothing left to carry it to further existence—capital and surplus were both wiped out. And it must be said to their credit that most of them, at a time like this, pay every cent they owe, even if they have to go out of business directly afterwards."

"But if they haven't enough money to pay their losses? Suppose their capital and surplus isn't sufficient?"

"Then they either fail, and the receiver pays what he can to each claimant, or else they call upon their stockholders—assess them. Once in a while you will find a company refusing to pay, on the ground that so great a calamity is an act of God, which no indemnity was ever designed or intended to cover. Quite a few foreign companies took this stand after the San Francisco earthquake-fire; but the leading companies, American and foreign, paid dollar for dollar. The smaller fry tried to compromise a bit; but most of them eventually made pretty fair settlements, in the main. We'll see what they'll do in Boston."

"After the fire is out."

"Yes; and I really must go now, for I'm very anxious to see how they're handling it."

"It was very good of you to come."

"I'll come again, if there is anything of consequence to report. I'm certain you'll be all right here. You haven't worried too much, have you?"

"Well, the waiting has been pretty bad," the girl confessed.

"Then don't worry any more, either of you, for if there should be the slightest danger, I'll come back at once."

Helen hesitated a moment.

"Mr. Smith promised to come and 'save us,' if we needed saving," she said, with the merest trace of a flush.

"Ah," replied her uncle, slowly. "Then I think we may safely leave your rescue to him. I will come as a reporter only. Good-by."

From the time of his departure there had been no visitor from the outside world until Smith's ring came as the clock made ready to strike nine. Helen herself opened the door, as the maid had gone downstairs for further enlightenment from the authorities below; and Miss Maitland found herself confronted by a man whom at first she hardly recognized, so hollow-eyed, so weary, and withal so grimy did he look. Her little start at seeing him was noted by Smith, and he guessed the reason for it.

"Don't be alarmed," he said, with a shadow of his old smile. "Under all the disguises it's really I. I know that I must look like a dissipated coal heaver, but I flatter myself that you'll be glad to see me, just the same, for I came to tell you that the danger is over—the fire is practically out."

"Then you must come in and let me get you something to eat," said the girl.

"Thank you very much, but I don't think I will. Somehow I don't seem to feel very hungry. But I'm horribly sleepy. I don't believe I was ever so sleepy in my life. So good-night."

But she stood with her back to the door.

"Where did you intend to go?" she demanded. "The hotels that are not burned are probably filled to the brim. Besides, your clothes are here. You can't go away. You must stay here."

"That's awfully kind of you, to offer to take me in," the other rejoined; "but you cannot house a disreputable chimney sweep. Besides—"

But she did not give him any opportunity to complete the sentence.

"Don't be absurd; you're usually quite sensible. Mother and I had it all decided hours ago. You're to stay with us. Your room is all ready for you—and your bath," she added.

He acknowledged the touch with an appreciative but weary smile.

"Well, then, if you really don't mind, I'll take you up," he said.

"Will you have supper first?"

"Thanks, no—nothing but sleep. I'm ashamed of being so fearfully tired—you must excuse me. But I don't believe any man can stay awake indefinitely."

"No, I don't believe any man can," Helen agreed.

It was ten o'clock the next day when Smith opened his eyes once more upon a normal world. The sun was shining brightly, but it was some moments before he could assure himself that he was actually awake again. The twelve hours' sleep, during which apparently not one muscle had he stirred, had gone far to repair the ravages of thirty-six hours' steady wakefulness, and a cold bath did the rest. The two ladies were found to be in the dining room, still absorbed in the morning edition of a newspaper whose building had escaped the sweep of the conflagration.

"Why, it's only half-past ten!" was Helen's greeting. "I didn't expect you so early. Mother suggested that we wait breakfast for you; but I said it would be much closer your wishes if we waited lunch instead."

"Well, I think I must have condensed an enormous amount of sleep into the last twelve hours," said Smith; "for I feel as well as ever. Tell me what has happened—I see you have the papers."

"What is going to happen is also important—your breakfast," the girl responded. "Go over there, where you see that napkin sitting expectantly on its haunches, and Marie will be in directly."

"Thank you. I hope you won't be scandalized at my appetite. Is the fire entirely out?"

"Yes—practically. Here's the paper."

"That's very good of you. You'll pardon me if I just look at the headlines?"

"Of course." And for a few moments there was little conversation in the sunny dining room.

"And now will you do me a favor?" said Miss Maitland.

Smith looked at her; a long moment.

"I will do anything in the world for you," he said, "except one thing."

The girl flushed a little.

"I want you to take me out to the fire," she responded.

The other looked at her in surprise.

"Why, of course," he said. "I never thought of doing anything else. If my calculations are correct, it will take me exactly as long to finish those three pieces of toast as for you to get ready. Better wear old clothes—it may be pretty dirty."

Five minutes later they descended to the street.

"Why, it's been snowing!" said Smith, in surprise.

A light fall of snow covered sidewalk and lawns; there were few men this day with sufficient leisure to sweep away snow. As the two went northward through the bright morning, they walked for the most part in silence. All seemed very still, for there were no street cars moving, and most of the customary confusion of a city's streets was oddly hushed. Few people were abroad, at least along where their path lay; it was almost as though they were passing through a deserted city.

"Look at that," Smith said once. "I don't believe you were ever on this corner when you couldn't see a single person."

"Where do you suppose every one is?" asked Helen, curiously.

"At the ruins. Do you know, this reminds me of one of the strangest things I ever saw."

"What was that?" the girl inquired, turning toward him.

"The only absolutely deserted town in America—at least I think it must be the only one. I never heard any one speak of another. But I know this one exists, for I saw it myself."

"Where is it? I never heard of such a thing. It sounds like Herculaneum or some of those Assyrian cities where they are always digging up statues and tablets and things."

"But this isn't a buried town. It's a real town, built perhaps twenty or thirty years ago; and it's located out in northern Indiana. And a perfectly nice little town, with brick stores and a couple of paved streets and other advantages. Everything—except inhabitants. No one lives there."

"Why not? Is this really true?"

"True as gospel. I saw it myself. I walked through the deserted streets. And a rather uncanny feeling it gave me, too."

"Was it unhealthy? Why did the people leave?"

"I haven't the vaguest idea," said Smith; and as he answered he raised his arm to point eastward along the street they had that moment reached. Following the direction in which he was pointing, Helen saw a thin line of smoke rising feebly from a pile of dÉbris upon the ground. Near by were similar piles, sullenly smoldering.

"There's where they stopped it," said Smith.

They walked quickly along until they came to the very corner on which the last ebbing wave of the sea of fire had turned. This corner was at the intersection of Shawmut Avenue with the railroad's right of way. Over the tracks at this point was a raised steel bridge, and to this they now directed their steps. At the end of the bridge they stopped. The bridge was elevated sufficiently so that they could see a considerable distance northward, and for some moments they stood and looked in silence at the sight which lay beyond them.

It was something which is only to be seen once in the course of an ordinary lifetime—the complete ruin of the integral part of a great city. With something too remote yet too bitterly real for any words gripping at her heart, Helen stood looking out over a scene such as she never could have imagined. Here was ruin incarnate, desolation supreme; this was the bitter tragedy of that which once was great turned suddenly into pitiful nothingness before her very eyes.

In the foreground, at their feet, lay the heaped dÉbris of the bricks, timbers, and contents of a whole row of dynamited buildings—the sacrificed buildings which by their own destruction had checked the conflagration at the last. There they lay, still smoldering or blazing in some places, utterly still and lifeless in others, with stray beams and bits of cornice or of tin roofing, twisted into weird shapes, sticking out at odd angles. Here and there unconsumed and hardly damaged articles that had been contained in these buildings lay unheeded; for here where the flames had died, they had not destroyed everything combustible, as they had seemed to do almost everywhere else. On the west side of Shawmut Avenue, where the houses still stood intact, a few men were to be seen; these were the state militiamen in their fatigue uniforms, patrolling the ruins. Smith called Helen's attention to them.

"Why are they there?" she asked.

"To watch the vultures gathering for the feast. See! There goes one of them now—over there to the left."

Helen looked; skulking along in the shadow of a ruined wall was a shabby, rough-looking man who stole swiftly out of sight behind a pile of rubbish.

"One of the scavengers. They come almost automatically after every great disaster—fire, flood, battle, or pestilence. Ghouls, you understand, from heaven knows where. That man's great-grandfather probably robbed the dead grenadiers of the Legion of Honor at Waterloo."

"Thieves?" said the girl, in horror.

"Worse than thieves. Vandals, body-snatchers, murderers, if it came to that. The kind of man who'd cut the finger off a dying woman to get her wedding ring. Unpleasant, isn't it? Well, the militia are under orders to shoot them on sight, if caught in the act. But let's go a little farther on; I think we can get a better view from farther north."

"Wait," said his companion. "I am not ready to go—yet."

Smith heeded her voice, and for another unnoted interval they stood agaze upon their little eminence.

Far to the northward the scene of ruin stretched away. Almost as far as the eye could reach was only the shadow, the terrible and disfigured skeleton of what had been the city. Everywhere were smoldering piles with occasional tongues of sullen, orange flame and their myriad threads of smoke trailing upward in the still air like Indians' signal fires. Here was a brick building, apparently hardly touched or harmed, lifting its lonely height over its prostrate neighbors. Here a partly burned structure, gutted but still erect, stood like a grim, articulated skeleton, a gaunt scarecrow against the skyline. Everywhere were mounds and hollows, hills and valleys, so that the natural contour of the earth, unseen now these hundred years, once more appeared. And over it all, everywhere that the fire had wholly burned out, lay the heart-breaking beauty and whiteness of the snow, and of the ashes under the snow.

"How terribly white it is!" said Helen, in a low voice.

Smith only nodded. Feeling her mood, he left her to speak when she was ready, and presently she did so.

"Shall we go now?" she asked.

"Suppose we do. I want to show you, if I can—and to see myself—what is left of the shopping and hotel and theater district. There can't be much left."

They turned back in the way they had come, for Tremont Street above this point was no thoroughfare. By a somewhat circuitous route at last they reached the corner of the Common; and here, at the edge of the great throng of curious onlookers, they paused.

"There's where I didn't sleep last night," said Smith.

The Hotel Aquitaine, such as it was, stood gauntly staring at them from its dozens of empty windows. The building itself was intact, but every piece of inflammable material in its contents seemed to have been wiped out of existence as utterly as though made of tissue paper. With a little shudder Helen turned away, and they moved onward.

For all Smith's fire-line badge, they were not permitted to enter the patrolled district, and they could only join the throng which was circling about the outskirts. This was not a very inspiring nor even a very interesting thing, although the people for the most part were oddly silent, seeming to have been numbed by the extent of the disaster. Helen found before very long that she had seen enough.

"What a fearful crowd! I think I'd rather go where there aren't quite so many people," she told Smith.

"All right—wait until I see what happened to Jordan's store; then we'll go."

Five minutes later they were heading back southward in the direction of their bridge.

"It is beyond words, isn't it?" observed Smith. "There is nothing at all adequate that a man can say when he is confronted by such a thing as this, and almost nothing that he can do."

"Isn't there something, though?" the girl asked. "There must be hundreds of people homeless, without food or money or anything! Cannot we do anything to help them?"

"No doubt," said the man. "Individually we could scarcely be of much assistance; but I fancy that the local charity organizations or the Red Cross would see that any contribution went where it would do the most good."

Only a few minutes later they found where one of these institutions had opened temporary headquarters in an old church.

"Let us go in," said Miss Maitland.

As they entered they saw that the church was filled with refugees, come in to escape the cold. They were most of them sitting in groups, talking eagerly to one another. Some were lying asleep, stretched out full length on the pews. A woman was going about, serving hot coffee and soup and bread. The refugees ate hungrily, but on the faces of almost all of them rested the same dispirited look of dazed wonder. Apparently they were chiefly foreigners, the majority Italians, and it was evident that they had lost everything they had possessed. Helen stood watching them with a sad heart from the back of the church, and Smith, looking at her, saw that her eyes were full of tears. He laid his hand gently on her arm. "Please don't," he said gravely. But he understood.

"But it seems so unfair for them to have lost everything," the girl said. "They had so little to lose."

She turned her face to his.

"There is no answer to that," he said; "but we can help them a little."

To the woman in charge they gave what they could afford to give, and turned toward home. It was nearly four o'clock, and Mrs. Maitland might be growing anxious about their safety. They walked forward in a silence which neither wished to break.

It was soon broken, however, by a chance occurrence. They were passing by an open street on the edge of the burned district. Across the street, under a none too steady wall, a woman whose distress had evidently touched the good nature of the militiaman patrolling the other end of the block was hunting about among heaps of dÉbris, searching for things which might perhaps have been spared by the flames. On top of the house wall was a battered stone coping, which, as Smith and Helen paused, gave a sudden lurch and seemed about to fall. The woman, her head bent, saw nothing; but Smith, with a startled exclamation, started quickly forward.

"Look out there!" he called sharply. "Come away from that wall!"

The woman, with her back turned, paid no attention to the warning—probably did not even hear him. The coping, poised on the wall's edge, swayed perilously. If it fell, there would be one less of the indigent and helpless for the relief committees to support. With a half angry exclamation Smith sprang forward.

On his sleeve he felt the quick pressure of a hand. At the same moment the crouching woman, having finished her search, or perhaps moved by an instinct of danger, walked slowly on, and out from under the wall. The coping did not fall.

Smith turned to find the girl's fingers closed tight upon his arm, and in her eyes something he had never seen before. She stood still a moment, and when at last she withdrew her hand, she spoke in a voice so low that he could barely catch the words.

"Why did you do that?"

"She didn't see the coping," he said, as naturally as he could.

"It might have fallen—on you!"

"Yes," he said; "I suppose it might. But you see, it didn't."

"It might have killed you," she said, still in a low voice.

Smith turned abruptly, and looked at her.

"How much would you have cared, Helen?" he asked.

Even at this moment the trammels of her ancestry were on her; she made no answer.

"How much would you have cared, dear?" he asked again, gently.

Then at last she raised her eyes, and met his fairly.

"More than anything—more than everything in the world," she said.

The early gray February twilight was closing in upon them when they left the lifted bridge. They had been there long, yet as they turned to go, Helen gave one backward look. There, spread away across the stricken plain, she saw for the last time the prostrate thing which yesterday had been the living city; and over it, like the winding linen of a shroud, lay the white ashes in the snow.