plenty of followers to support him behind. He took the command of affairs while John lay moaning, scorched, and drenched on the wet step, with people rushing past him, now and then almost treading on him, and pain gradually rousing him into consciousness. They had tried to take his charge from him and he had resisted, showing a dawn of memory. When the water from the hose struck him again in the face, he struggled half up, and sat and looked round him. “Good Lord, Mr Mitford!” said Mr Whichelo, the chief cashier, discovering him with consternation. “Take me somewhere,[Pg 46]” gasped John; “and take care of these,” holding out his innocent booty. Mr Whichelo rushed at him eagerly. “God bless you!” he cried; “it was that I was thinking of. How did you get it? have you been into the fire and the flames to fetch it, and saved my character?” cried the poor man, hysterically. “Hold your tongue, and take me somewhere!” cried John; and the next moment his senses had once more forsaken him, and he knew nothing about either blaze or flame.

[Pg 45]

[Pg 46]

The after incidents of the night, of which John was conscious only by glimpses, were—that he was carried to the inn opposite, his treasures taken from his arms and locked carefully away, and the doctor brought, who examined him, and shook his head, and said a great deal about a shock to the nerves. John was in one of his intervals of consciousness when this was said, and raised himself from the strange distance and dreaminess in which he seemed to be lying. “I have had no shock to my nerves,” he said. “I’m burnt and sore and soaking, that’s all. Plaster me or mend me somehow.” And this effort saved him from[Pg 47] the feverish confusion into which he was falling. When he came to himself he felt that he was indeed sore all over, with minute burns in a hundred places about his person; his hair and his eyelashes scorched off, and his skin all blistered and burning. Perhaps it was the pain which kept him in full possession of his faculties for all the rest of the night. Then he felt it was not the fire he had cared for, nor the possible loss, but only the pure satisfaction of doing something. When they told him the fire was got under, the strong room saved, and that nothing very serious had happened, the news did not in the least excite him. He had asked as if he was profoundly concerned, and he was scarcely even interested. “Pain has often that effect,” he heard the doctor say. “This kind of irritating, ever-present suffering, absorbs the mind. Of course he cares. Tell him again, that the news may get into his mind.” And then somebody told him again, and John longed to 

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