FIRE!
The three girls dashed to the front door of the Harrison house but were
met and driven back by a cloud of smoke.
"The dining room's full of it!" cried Nan. "Probably the stairs are
afire!"
"We'll have to reach the room from the outside," declared Jo.
Ever the leader in moments when level head and quick action were
needed, Jo Morley looked about her.
Painters had been at work on the outside of the house. These had
finished their day's work, but had left behind them some paint cans, an
empty bucket or two, and a long ladder.
The three girls saw it at the same instant, but Jo was the first to
reach it.
Together they raised the heavy ladder and with much straining effort
brought it around to the rear of the house.
The cries of the invalid could still be heard, but they were becoming
terrifyingly faint and weak.
"Oh, hurry, hurry!" almost sobbed Nan. "If we don't reach her soon it
will be too late----"
"You two stay here and hold the ladder!" Jo commanded briskly. "I'm
going up!"
"No, Jo! Let me go!" cried Nan.
But Jo Morley was already half way up the ladder, scaling it like a
monkey.
Fortunately, a shed stretched beneath one window of the invalid's room.
This shed had been added to the house after construction, and was used
by the Harrisons as a pantry. The roof of the shed, Jo noticed swiftly,
was almost level.
"There's luck, anyway!" she thought, as she hopped nimbly from the
ladder to the shed roof and ran over toward the open window.
A cloud of smoke rolled from this aperture, suffocating smoke that
caught in Jo's throat and choked her. She turned aside for a moment,
drew in a long breath of clean, cool air, then plunged bravely through
the window into the room beyond.
The smoke stung her eyes. Blinded, Jo groped with feverish hands.
"Miss Emma!" she cried. "Where are you? Help me to find you!"
"Here I am--right here!"
The voice, though faint, was close to her. Jo turned sharply and
stumbled over a chair. Her tortured eyes saw dimly a figure straining
toward her.
"Help me out! Help me out! This smoke! I can't fight it any longer!"
Jo's strong young arms went about the slender, wasted figure in the
chair.
"If you can put your arm over my shoulders--that's it! Now I'll have
you out in a jiffy!"
Jo spoke more confidently than she felt. The smoke swirled about her
like a living thing; it robbed her of sight; it sapped her strength. To
carry this helpless invalid to the safety of the shed roof seemed at
the moment utterly beyond her power.
"I can't do it! I can't do it!" she cried. Then, with a sudden
stiffening of her will: "I _will_ do it!"
Even in her torment of mind and body, Jo found time to wonder why there
was no flame.
"All smoke and no fire!" she thought.
She wound her arms more tightly about the invalid. A sudden sagging of
the woman's weight frightened her. A quick glance confirmed her fear.
Aunt Emma had fainted!
Jo summoned all her strength and staggered with her burden toward the
square of window. She could not lift the invalid; could only drag her
step by step away from the torment of the smoke-filled room.
What if the woman was dead? She was so heavy!
Jo's throat was parched. The blood pounded in her temples. Tears from
her tortured eyes ran down her face.
Only a step more----
She reached the sill. Gasping, she rested her burden on the sill for
a moment, striving for breath. A cloud of smoke rolled over her,
stifling, blinding.
Suppose Miss Emma were dead! One breath of fresh air----
Jo tried to lift the unconscious woman across the sill. Useless! Her
strength had deserted her. Her head whirled dizzily. Only the grip of
her hand on the window sill kept her on her feet.
"Oh, what shall I do! What shall I do?" she cried aloud in her
impotence. "Help me, some one! Help me!"
As though in answer to her cry, a figure appeared on the shed outside
the window.
"Jo, have you got her?" The voice was Nan's.
Jo cried in an agony of relief:
"Oh, I'm so glad you came, glad! Can you help me get her over the
window sill?"
Some one else was on the shed, and Jo knew vaguely that it was Sadie.
They had both come to help her. Well, it was just in the nick of time!
Between them, the chums managed to get the unconscious woman over
the window sill and on to the shed roof outside. Jo, relieved of her
burden, scrambled over herself.
She stood there for a moment breathing in deep breaths of the pure
evening air. Then she looked toward the invalid.
The latter was stretched out on the shed, her head pillowed on Nan's
arm. Nan was crying over and over again that they had come too late;
that her aunt was dead.
Sadie looked on dumbly at the scene, frightened and not knowing just
how to help.
Jo pushed her aside and knelt beside the invalid.
"She isn't dead. Look, Nan. She's breathing, and there's color in her
face!"
Nan's face brightened and she raised the helpless head that rested on
her arm.
"If we could only get her down off this shed!" Sadie Appleby was
looking nervously at the black smoke that rolled from the window. "The
fire may break out any minute!"
"How are we going to get her down the ladder?" Nan waved her hand
helplessly. "Not one of us is strong enough and there's no one else in
sight."
She was wrong there. Jo ran to the edge of the shed and pointed
excitedly.
"Here comes your maid, Nan!" she cried. "And there's a man with her.
We'll have help now!"
Annie, the Harrison's hired girl, who had been gossiping with the
man of all work at the home of the Jamesons, some distance down the
street, had seen the smoke from the Harrison house and had hurried to
see what was wrong.
Annie was suddenly conscience-stricken and wretchedly frightened.
"And Miss Emma up in that room all by herself and her not able to move
hand or foot!" she wailed. "I should 'a' knowed better than to leave
her alone, I should! And the worst of the smoke, it's coming from Miss
Emma's room!" the half-hysterical Annie wailed, as, followed by the
man, she drew nearer. "She's dead by this time! Sure I know it to my
sorrow and all the fault o' Annie O'Brien! I wisht I was dead, that I
do!"
Nan poked her head over the edge of the shed.
"Stop that noise, Annie! Aunt Emma's safe. And if you've got a good
strong man down there, for goodness sake, send him up!"