“Don’t hesitate to go if you wish to,” she said.  At the same moment Evan dashed back, calling:  “It’s a fire on the river front, a lumber yard; plenty of work ahead, with little danger and a wonderful spectacle.  Why can we not all go to see it, for it’s only half a dozen blocks away?  Bundle up, though, it’s bitterly cold.”

Horace Bradford sprang to his feet and Sylvia was halfway upstairs and fairly out of her evening gown when Miss Lavinia made up her mind to go also, Evan’s words having the infection of a stampede.

“Don’t forget the apples,” I called to Evan as I followed my hostess.

“The shops and stands are closed, I’m afraid,” he called back from the stoop where he was waiting; “perhaps Miss Lavinia has some in the house.”

“Apples, yes, plenty; but for mercy’s sake what for?  You surely aren’t thinking of pelting the fire out with them!” she gasped, hurrying downstairs and struggling to disentangle her eyeglasses from her bonnet strings; a complication that was always happening at crucial moments, such as picking out change in an elevated railway station, and thereby blocking the crowd.

“No, apples to feed the fire horses; Barbara always does,” Evan answered, dashing down the basement stairs to the kitchen, and returning quickly with a medley of apples and soup vegetables in a dish-towel bundle, leaving the solemn cook speechlessly astonished.

Then we started off, Evan leading the way, and the procession straggling after in Indian file; for the back streets were not well shovelled, and to go two abreast meant that one foot of each was on a side hill.  Evan fairly dragged me along.  Sylvia and Bradford, being fleet of foot, had no difficulty in following, but Martin and Miss Lavinia had rather a bumpy time of it.  Still, as pretty much all the uncrippled inhabitants of the district were going the same way, our flight was not conspicuous.

It was, as Evan had promised, a glorious fire!  Long before we reached the Hudson the sky rayed and flamed with all the smokeless change of the Northern Lights.  Once there, Evan piloted us through the densely packed crowd to the side string-piece of a pier, Miss Lavinia giving little shrieks the while, and begging not to be pushed into the water.

From this point the great stacks of lumber that made the giant bonfire could be seen at the two points, from land and water side, where the fire-boats were shooting streams from their well-aimed nozzles.

As usual, after running the steam-pumping engines as close as desirable to the flames, the horses were detached, blanketed, and tied up safe from harm, and we found a group of three great intelligent iron-gray beauties close behind us, who accepted the contents of the dish-towel with almost human appreciation, while a queer, wise, brown dog, an engine mascot, who was perched on the back of the middle horse, shared the petting with a politely matter-of-fact air.