"Everyone get out," he cried, "and make room for the doctors. Let there be three doctors to a table and one nurse while they last."
Skillfully, cleverly, worked the looters of the dead. Rings were torn from stiffened fingers, watches, bracelets, chains, purses taken from bosoms, then out in the surging crowd of excited humanity went the thieves, lost to recognition by those who saw them loot in the terribleness of the scene.
PRAYERS FOR THE DYING.
Through the mangled mass of humanity moved a priest with a crucifix in his white hands—Father McCarthy of Holy Name Cathedral, saying the prayers for the dying—not for the dead, but to give the last words of a hope beyond. Many persons died with the words of Father McCarthy sounding like music in their ears.
"I was with the Army of the Potomac during the Civil War," said Dr. H. L. Montgomery as he worked over the dying. "I rescued 150 people during the great Chicago fire. I have seen the wreckage of explosions. But I never saw anything so grimly horrible as this."
"Will Davis is in the theater now and acting like crazy," interrupted the voice of a boy. "Can't no one speak to him?"
And out dashed all the employes of the burning theater to find Mr. Davis as he paced the destroyed gallery floor and looked at the ruin below and at the dead as they were hauled out of the debris.
Little Ruth Thompson, the seven-year-old daughter of John R. Thompson, was in the fire and almost to the front exit when the mob hurled her back. The tiny child fought and was yet forced back. She climbed onto the stage, burning as it was, and worked her way to the rear door and out into the alley, then through into the scene of death and pain in her father's restaurant.
"Papa, I got out. Where's grandpa?" she cried.
There was one old man, with white beard and hair, who wept over the body of his aged wife. He was Patrick P. O'Donnell of the firm of O'Donnell & Duer.