My heart was like to burst within me when I heard this dismal news, remembering that I myself had once an old mother, that was now in the mools; so I brushed up the stair like a hatter, and burst open the door of the fore-garret--for in the hurry I could not find the sneck, and did not like to stand on ceremony.

I could not see my finger before me, and did not know my right hand from the left, for the smoke; but I groped round and round, though the reek mostly cut my breath, and made me cough at no allowance, till at last I catched hold of something cold and clammy, which I gave a pull, not knowing what it was, but found out to be the old wife's nose.

I cried out as loud as I was able for the poor creature to hoise herself up into my arms; but, receiving no answer, I discovered in a moment that she was suffocated, the foul air having gone down her wrong hause; and, though I had aye a terror at looking at, far less handling a dead corpse, there was something brave within me at the moment, my blood being up; so I caught hold of her by the shoulders, and harling her with all my might out of her bed, got her lifted on my back heads and thraws, in the manner of a boll of meal, and away as fast as my legs could carry me.
There was a providence in this haste; for, ere I was half-way down the stair, the floor fell with a thud like thunder; and such a combustion of soot, stour, and sparks arose, as was never seen or heard tell of in the memory of man since the day that Samson pulled over the pillars in the house of Dagon, and smoored all the mocking Philistines as flat as flounders.

For the space of a minute I was as blind as a beetle, and was like to be choked for want of breath; however, as the dust began to clear up, I saw an open window, and hallooed down to the crowd for the sake of mercy to bring a ladder, to save the lives of two perishing fellow-creatures, for now my own was also in imminent jeopardy.

They were long of coming, and I did not know what to do; so thinking that the old wife, as she had not spoken, was maybe dead already, I was once determined just to let her drop down upon the street; but I knew that the so doing would have cracked every bone in her body, and the glory of my bravery would thus have been worse than lost.