‘Show me where? Tell me how to reach the blue room, sir,’ I cried; and calling to the nearest fireman, we three went on into the burning house—while awed silence fell upon the crowd without.
What a labyrinth of a place it was, all wainscotted and panelled too, the woodwork like so much tinder from age and dry rot! We ran through passages choked with acrid fumes, up stairs dripping with foul water, past the doors of pleasant studious rooms where we heard the fire hissing and crackling within; finally half-way down a long corridor—and there we stopped short. Ahead of us stretched an apparently impenetrable barrier of smoke; and beyond it, felt rather than seen, a redness of bellowing flame.
Three times we pushed forward into the smoke, and thrice staggered back half senseless. The third time I got far enough to find the floor burning and crumbling beneath my feet. All ingress was cut off.
‘Ah! the poor child, the poor doomed child,’ the Master wailed, stirred to the depths of his kindly and genial nature. ‘She must die—and, oh! my God, what a death.’
‘Can they raise no ladder to the window from the court? I asked, distracted by the sight of my old friend’s grief.
‘What use? You forget the bars.’
‘Can we break through no party-wall?—from a side room?’
‘Yes—a side room. The door is there—within the smoke—on the left, if you can reach it. God bless you for the thought—and we may save her yet.’
‘Have you an axe?’ I cried to the fireman.
‘Trust me for that, sir,’ he answered.