"Where?" he asked of the shrieking women pouring from all the filthy, narrow wynds around.
"In Gordon's Wynd."
He was there almost the first of any efficient aid, striving to make his way up the smoke-filled stairs, but this was impossible. The house was one of those ancient ones, piled story upon story; so old that it was almost tinder. But those on the opposite side were so close that not unfrequently a plank or two flung across from opposite windows made a bridge for the benefit of those seeking to elude justice.
By means of such a bridge all the inhabitants of the burning house were removed, and no one was more energetic in carrying the women and children across the dangerous planks than Archie Scott; for his mountain training had made such a feat one of no extraordinary danger to him. Satisfied at length that all life was out of risk, he was turning to go home, when a white, terrible face looked out of the top-most floor, showing itself amid the gusts of smoke like the dream of a corpse, and screaming for help in agonizing tones. Archie knew that face only too well. But he remembered, in the same instant, what his father had said in dying, and, swift as a mountain deer, he was quickly on the top floor of the opposite house again.
In a few moments the planks bridged the distance between death and safety; but no entreaties could make the man risk the dangerous passage. Setting tight his lips, Archie went for the shrieking coward, and carried him into the opposite house. Then the saved man recognized his preserver.
"Oh, Mr. Scott!" he said, "for God's sake, my wife and my child! The last of seven!"
"You scoundrel! Do you mean to say you saved yourself before Katie and your child!"
Archie did not wait for the answer; again he was at the window of the burning room. Too late! The flames were already devouring what the smoke had smothered; their wretched pallet was a funeral pyre. He had hardly time to save his own life.
"They are dead, Semple!"
Then the poor creature burst into a paroxysm of grief, moaned and cried, and begged a few shillings, and vowed he was the most miserable creature on earth.