I tried to get people to make way for me by saying--"It's my house,
please let me through!" But nobody seemed to hear me. And yet there
was a pause, which was only filled by that curious sound when a crowd
of people gasp or sigh; and if every man had been a rock it could not
have been more impossible to move backwards or forwards. It was dark,
except for the moonlight, where I stood, but in a moment or two the
flames burst from the bedroom windows, and the red light spread
farther, and began to light up faces near me. I was just about to
appeal to a man I knew, when a roar began which I knew was not that of
the fire. It was the roar of human voices. And when it swelled louder,
and was caught up as it came along, and then broke into deafening
cheers, I was so wild with excitement and anxiety that I began to kick
the legs of the man in front of me to make him let me go to the home
that was burning before my eyes.

What he would have done in return, I don't know, but at this moment
the crowd broke up, and we were pushed, and pressed, and jostled
about, and people kept calling to "Make way!" and after tumbling down,
and being picked up twice, I found myself in the front row of a kind
of lane that had been made through the crowd, down which several men
were coming, carrying on their shoulders an arm-chair with people in
it.

As they passed me there was a crash, which seemed to shake the street.
The roof of our house had fallen in!

As it fell the flames burst upon every side, and in the sudden glare
the street became as bright as day, and every little thing about one
seemed to spring into sight. Half the crowd was known to me in a