"Are the people all out?" asked Bob.
"Dunno, guess so. Don't see any one, do you?"
But, at that moment, a figure appeared at a front third-story window and shouted for help. At the sound of the voice, Bob's heart almost stopped beating, and shading his eyes with his hand, he gazed eagerly upward. "It can't be possible," he thought, "but that was Jack's voice sure as guns, and what's more, it looks like him." Just then, the boy gave another wild cry for help.
"My soul, that's Jack," he groaned, "sure as fate. Quick," he shouted, "where's a ladder?"
The cry was taken up by the crowd, and in a minute, a man pushed his way through the crowd, carrying a fairly long ladder. Eager hands seized it and raised it toward the boy, but alas for their hopes, it reached only to the middle of the second story window, too short by nearly eight feet. Bob gave a groan, but just then he saw a store on the opposite side of the street, and rushing across, he darted in. "A coil of rope," he shouted, but there was no one there. Just at that moment, however, a man rushed in, and hearing Bob's cry, darted to the back part of the store, to return almost instantly, dragging about twenty feet of rope after him. Snatching the end of the rope from his hand, Bob rushed back across the street rapidly coiling it as he ran. By the time he reached the foot of the ladder the smoke and flames were pouring from the windows in great clouds and the entire front of the house was tottering.
"Can't do it," shouted a man, "it'll fall before you can get up."
"I'm going to do it anyway," muttered the boy as he started to ascend.
The heat was terrific, and the smoke nearly choked him, but he fought his way upward rung by rung. It seemed that he would never reach the top, as the rungs of the ladder were so hot they fairly blistered his hands and the walls threatened to fall at any moment, but he did it, and bracing himself by putting one foot through the ladder, he grasped one end of the rope in his right hand, holding the coil in his left.
"Now, Jack, catch it," he shouted.
"Great guns, Bob, how'd you get here?"