"Then you had better get back. Something may cave in soon, you know."
While Robert hesitated another officer came along, and then everybody was ordered back, and a rope was stretched across the street at either end of the block. Meanwhile the fire kept increasing until it was easy to see that the office building was doomed.
"It's too bad," thought Robert, as he watched the progress of the flames. "This will upset Mr. Gray's business completely."
Half an hour later, as the boy was moving around in the dense crowd, he ran across Livingston Palmer.
"This will throw us out of employment, Livingston," he said.
"It looks like it, Robert," answered the senior clerk. "Still, I can't say that I care so much."
"You do not?"
"No. You see, after we closed up Saturday night I met my friend Jack Dixon, of the Combination Comedy Company, and he has offered me a place to travel with the organization."
"And you are going to accept?"