With her back to the house she zigzagged her feet along the cornice to get away from the smoke, which now poured directly from the window.

Then she grew dizzy; the weight of the child on her bosom seemed to be toppling her forward towards the abyss below.

She closed her eyes, frantically grasping the child with crossed arms on her breast as she stood on the ledge, until, as seen from below through the twisting smoke, they might have seemed a figure of the Madonna and Child niched in the wall.

Then a voice from above called to her, "Courage!" and she felt the flap of a twisted sheet lowered from an upper window against her face.

She grasped it eagerly; it held firmly.