above the pit stood Stephen, lifting aloft a little child with
frightened eyes and long streaming curls. He swung him high and turned
to stoop again; then with his stooping came the crash; the rending,
grinding, groaning, twisting of all that held those great galleries in
place, as the fire licked hold of their supports and wrenched them out
of position.

One instant Stephen was standing by that crimson-velvet railing, with
his lifted hand pointing the way to safety for the child, the flaming
fire lighting his face with glory, his hair a halo about his head, and
in the next instant, even as his hand was held out to save another, the
gallery fell, crashing into the fiery, burning furnace! And Stephen,
with his face shining like an angel's, went down and disappeared with
the rest, while the consuming fire swept up and covered them.

Paul Courtland closed his eyes on the scene, and caught hold of the door
by which he stood. He did not realize that he was standing on a tiny
ledge, all that was left him of footing, high, alone, above that burning
pit where his fellow-student had gone down; nor that he had escaped as
by a miracle. There he stood and turned away his face, sick and dizzy
with the sight, blinded by the dazzling flames, shut in to that tiny
spot by a sudden wall of smoke that swept in about him. Yet in all the
danger and the horror the only thought that came was, "God! _That_ was a
_man_!"




CHAPTER II