"The best of the fire was over," as an habitual fire-goer expressed it, the crowd was thinning out, and Phaeton and I went to look for Ned, who, poor fellow! was pining in a dungeon where he could only look through iron bars upon a square of reddened sky.
We had hardly started upon this quest when several church-bells struck up a fresh alarm, and the news ran from mouth to mouth that there was another fire; but nobody seemed to know exactly where it was.
"Let's follow one of the engines," said Phaeton; and this time we cast our lot with Rough-and-Ready Seven—not with hand on the drag-ropes to assist in jumping her, but rather as ornamental tail-pieces.
"I think I shall take an axe this time," said Phaeton, as we ran along.
"I've no doubt you could handle one as well as Monkey Roe," said I,—"that is,"—and here I hesitated somewhat, "if you had on an easy suit of clothes. Mine seem to be a little too tight to give perfectly free play to your arms."
"Oh, as to that," said Phaeton, who had fairly caught the fireman fever, "if I find the coat too tight, I can throw it off."
The new fire proved to be at Mr. Glidden's house. It had probably caught from cinders wafted from the great fire and falling upon the steps. All about the front door was in a blaze.
At the sight of this, Phaeton seemed to become doubly excited. He rushed to the Hook-and-Ladder carriage, and came back in a minute with an axe in his hand and a fireman's hat on his head, which proved somewhat too large for him, and gave him the appearance of the victorious gladiator in Gérôme's famous picture.
He seemed now to consider himself a veteran fireman, and, without orders from anybody, rushed up to the side door and assaulted it vigorously, shivering it, with a few blows, into a mass of splinters.
He passed in through the wreck, and, for a few minutes, was lost to sight. I barely caught a glimpse of a man passing in behind him. What took place inside of the house, I learned afterward.