The little crowd of women about Helen had been silenced at first by the
tumult and glare, but now broke into wild lamentations, and entreaties
that Heaven would send the engine soon, wringing their hands, and
sobbing, and frightening the children that clung about their skirts even
more than the fire itself.

"How did it start?" Helen said, turning to the woman next to her, who,
shivering with excitement, held a baby in her arms, who gazed at the fire
with wide, tranquil eyes, as though it had been gotten up for his
entertainment.

"They say," answered the woman, tossing her head in the direction of Tom
Davis,--"they say him and some other fellows was in 'mong the lumber this
afternoon, drinkin', you know, and smokin'. Most likely a match dropped,
or ashes from their pipes. Drunken men ain't reasonable about them
things," she added, with the simplicity of experience. "They don't stop
to think they're burnin' up money, an' whiskey too; for Dobbs don't trust
'em, now the mill is shut down."

"Yes," said another woman who stood by, "them men! what do they care?
You," she shouted, shaking her fist at Tom,--"you'll starve us all, will
ye? an' your poor wife, just up from her sick bed! I do' know as she'll
be much worse off, though, when he is out of work," she added, turning to
Helen--"fer every blessed copper he has goes to the saloon."

"Yer man's as bad as me," Tom protested, stung by her taunts and the
jeers of the cripple.

"An' who is it as leads him on?" screamed the woman. "An' if he does take
a drop sometimes, it wasn't him as was in the lumber-yard this afternoon,