Through the smoke and darkness nothing is seen at first; but in rushes Jack, pounces upon something in one corner, tugging at it until he succeeds in dragging it to the door. Then they see what it is,—a child; and one of the men, the young man who put Jack through his tricks in the engine-house, picks it up. Through the smoke and darkness they make out that it is a boy, tall enough for a boy of seven, but how thin and light! He is either in a stupor from the effects of the suffocating smoke that filled the close room in which he was found, or else in a faint. At all events, he lies motionless in the fireman’s arms.
It takes more time to write the event than it took for it to transpire. The other men mount to the roof through the skylight, while the man who picked up the boy forces his way through the blinding smoke down to the street, closely followed by Jack. If it were not for the responsibility for the boy he discovered, Jack would have followed the men to the roof, for wherever they went he always followed.
The young fireman bears the motionless form of the boy to the street, and singles out the group of tenants who had succeeded in escaping in safety from the tenement-house.
“Which of you has left this child behind?” he sternly asks, looking at the different family groups crowded together, vainly trying to keep warm. “Whose is he?”
They are silent, and after waiting in vain for an answer he continues,—
“If you can’t answer, there are those who will know how to make you. You can’t leave a child shut up like that in an out-of-the-way room without being called to account.”
“Why, it’s the blind kid!” exclaims one of the men. “I forgot all about him.”
“People are not apt to forget their children at such a time,” replies the fireman, looking about him at the children who are crowding around their mothers. “This case shall be looked into.”