“I say,” whispered Little Jim, in an excited voice, “it’s Phil Sparks!”
“I’m glad to hear it,” observed a quiet, broad-shouldered man, who stood near two policemen, to whom he winked knowingly.
The Bloater attempted to move off, but one of the policemen detained him. The other detained Little Jim.
Meanwhile the crowd looked for Phil’s reappearance on the beam from which poor Ned Crashington had fallen, but Phil knew the house better than Ned. He gained the upper floor by a back stair, which was not quite impassable; seized Martha in his arms, just as she was about to leap into the street, and dragged her back into the smoke and flames. It appeared almost certain that both must have perished; but in a few seconds the man was seen to descend the lower stair with the woman in his arms, and in another moment a wild enthusiastic cheer burst from the vast multitude as he leaped into the street.
Laying Martha gently down on a doorstep, Sparks bent over her, and whispered in her ear. She appeared to have swooned, but opened her eyes, and gazed earnestly in the face of her deliverer.
“The Lord must have sent you to save me, Phil; He will save you also, if you will trust Him.”
“Forgive me, Martha, I was hard on you, but—”
“God bless you, Phil—”
“Clear the way there,” cried a commanding voice; “here, doctor, this way.”
The crowd opened. A medical man came forward and examined Martha, and pronounced her to be only slightly injured. Several men then raised her and carried her towards a neighbouring house. Phil Sparks was about to follow, but the quiet man with the broad shoulders touched him gently on the arm, and said that he was “wanted.”