Then a thrill ran through the crowd when they know that some one was within. For a moment or two they waited in breathless expectancy for her to reappear. The passage, was already smoking, and the hose was kept steadily playing upon it. A fireman dashed up the steps to the door, and disappeared. He was only just in time, for out of the burning, smoking room staggered a little figure, and dropped like a stone at his feet. Holding her in his arms, he faced the crowd, and a ringing cheer went up—a cheer that brought Mrs. Dale and her nephew to the windows, wondering at the cause.
Nesbitt burst into the room and enlightened them.
"Oh, if you please, ma'am, Peggy is burnt to death!"
It was a startling announcement, but when Mrs. Dale saw the blackened and unconscious little figure she almost feared it was true. In one hand she still grasped her stocking, in the other was Captain D'Arcy's despatch-box.
The young man took it from her clasp with some emotion.
"What a little trump! She must have heard my words, and gone straight to get it."
After a short consultation, poor Peggy was conveyed in a cab to the nearest hospital, Captain D'Arcy going with her himself. And, thoroughly unstrung, Mrs. Dale sat down and burst into tears. Nesbitt drew near to sympathise, but hardly to comfort.
"Lucy and I have often said, ma'am, that she be quite unnatural for goodness. They say them that have short lives have to make up for it, and gets all their goodness crammed up one end, so to speak. I never did hear a young girl so simple and earnest about her religion, and we have remarked that she would die early. They always do, that class o' girl, but it do seem so terrible an end. I really don't think, ma'am, there were any life in her when she were brought out. She must have been suffocated where she dropped, and perhaps it was a mercy!"
"Faithful unto death!" murmured Mrs. Dale, trying to compose herself. "Oh, Peggy, how you have shamed us all!"
A couple of hours later the fire was extinguished, and the crowd dispersed. Only one or two firemen and police guarded the house.