It started in the top story of the hotel, in the room of some fast young men, who were sitting up late playing cards.

They had smuggled wine into their room and had been drinking till they were stupid.

One of them upset the lamp, and when the flames began to spread so that they could not extinguish them, instead of rousing some one near them, they rushed downstairs to get some one there to come up and help them put out the fire.

When they returned with some of the hotel people, they found that the flames had spread from their room, which was in an "L" at the back of the house, to the front part, where Mrs.Montague's room was, and where the housemaids belonging to the hotel slept.

By this time Mr.Montague had gotten upstairs, but he found the passageway to his wife's room so full of flames and smoke, that, though he tried again and again to force his way through, he could not.