"Bully for them," shouted one of the firemen. The next moment he hurried across the "bridge," which bore his weight splendidly, and assisted the boys. Other firemen, with more hose, arrived, and several streams of water were soon playing on the factory walls below the "bridge."
"We'll save this building, anyway," said one of the firemen, handling a hose from one of Whimple's windows. And save it they did.
As the last girl crossed the bridge, the fireman who had been assisting Lucien and William ordered them to get out quickly. The big room was now full of smoke, the lads and the firemen were almost choked with it, and tongues of flame were beginning to lick one of the wooden partition walls. Just as the man spoke, the partition fell. A burning scantling struck Lucien on the head and sent him to the floor. In a moment William grabbed the burning timber with his bare hands and tried to lift it, but without the assistance of the fireman, who inserted his hook-axe under it, and added a man's strength to that of the boy's, he would not have been successful. Lucien was still conscious when they picked him up, and, with the assistance of William, made the journey across the "bridge" to Whimple's office in safety. Here kindly hands temporarily bound up his wounds and those of William too, the latter meanwhile asserting loudly, "Lucien did it; he thought of it; Lucien did it."
Finally, Lucien's parched and cracked lips parted in a smile. "Couldn't have done it without you, William," he gasped, and then the floor, so William Adolphus Turnpike afterwards solemnly asserted, rose up and hit him, and he knew nothing more until, in the evening, he woke up in a private ward in St. Michael's Hospital. There were only two beds in that ward. When William opened his eyes, a kindly faced nursing sister was bending over him.
"Where's Lucien?" he demanded.
The sister smiled. "In the bed near you," she said, gently; "his mother and father have just left him; he's——"
William sat straight up in the bed. "Say," he said, brokenly, "he ain't going to die, is he?"
"No," she answered, "he's doing splendidly, and he's fast asleep."
William laughed happily. "Oh, but he's a pippin, a real pippin; and me thinking he was a dub. If he wakes up, and I'm asleep, nurse, you can tell him from me that I'm a mutt. He's the real thing, is Lucien." Then he looked down at his hands, swathed in bandages, and grinned. "Kinder early for winter mitts," he said. "Gee, but my hands sting! Has my Ma and Pa been here?"
"They're here now, waiting to see you. They've been here for two hours, William."