Pacific was safe on the pavement, but she had only a moment before been flung from those flaming windows, and her terrified shrieks rent the air. The crowd gave a long-drawn groan, and mothers turned their eyes away and shivered. Nobody followed Marm Lisa up that flaming path of death and duty: it was no use flinging a good life after a worthless one.
"Fool! crazy fool!" people ejaculated, with tears of reverence in their eyes.
"Darling, splendid fool!" cried Mary. "Fool worth all the wise ones among us!"
"He that loseth his life for My sake shall find it!" said a pious Methodist cobbler with a patched boot under his arm.
In the eternity of waiting that was numbered really but in seconds, a burly policeman beckoned four men and gave them a big old-fashioned counterpane that some one had offered, telling them to stand ready for whatever might happen.
"Come closer, boys," said one of them, wetting his hat in a tub of water; "if we take a little scorchin’ doin’ this now, we may git it cooler in the next world!"
"Amen! Trust the Lord!" said the cobbler; and just then Marm Lisa appeared
