they just dropped everything where it was and run for their lives. There warn’t but one man on the premises, and he was such a blamed fool he wasted five minutes trying to turn the alarm into the letter-box on the lamp-post, ’stead of the right one alongside. I’m going home for some tools— Hullo! there’s the flames coming through one corner o’ the roof; that’s the last o’ the factory, I guess; but it ain’t much loss, any way; it’s a regular sweatin’-shop. They’ll let it go now, and try to save the buildings each side of it—that’s what they’ll do.’
That is what they were doing when Mary and Rhoda broke away from the voluble locksmith in the middle of his discourse and neared the scene of excitement. The firemen had not yet come, though it was rumored that a detachment was on the way. All the occupants of the tenement house were taking their goods and chattels out—running down the narrow stairways with feather-beds, dropping clocks and china ornaments from the windows, and endangering their lives by crawling down the fire-escapes with small articles of no value. Men were scarce at that hour in that locality, but there was a good contingent of
