In the middle of the night the fire bell rang out wildly. Three minutes
later Mark and Billy were flying down the street, with Tom McMertrie
and Jim Rafferty close after and a host of other tried and true, with
the minister on the other side of the street. The Fire Company of
Sabbath Valley held a proud record, and the minister was an active
member of it.

The fire was up in the plush mill and had already spread to a row of
shackley tenements that the owners of the mills had put up to house the
foreign labor that they had put in. They called them "apartment"
houses, but they were so much on the order of the city tenements of
several years back that it made Lynn's heart ache when she went there
to see a little sick child one day. Right in the midst of God's trees
and mountains, a man for money had built a death trap, tall, and
grim and dark, with small rooms and tiny windows, built it with timbers
too small for safety, and windows too few for ventilation, and here an
increasing number of families were herded, in spite of the complaints
of the town.

"I ben thenkin' it would coom," said Tom as he took long strides. "It's
the apartmints fer sure, Jimmy. We better beat it. There'll be only a
meenit er so to get the childer oot, before the whole thing's smoke!"