In a few minutes Hal was separated from his friend—­for he felt that he was his friend, and could have worked at his side until his last strength was expended.  Retiring from the burning building to gather new vigor for the conflict, a sight glared before his eyes as he gazed backward for a moment, which froze his blood and made him groan with horror.  The rear wall of the building, at a moment when no one expected it, with a crash, an eloquent yell of terror, fell, How many brave men were buried beneath the ruins, none could say.  Hal saw the stranger falling with the timbers and the mass of brick he strained his gaze to mark where he should rest, but lost sight of him beneath the piled-up beams and stones.

“A brave heart has perished!” cried Hal, thinking of but one of the many who had fallen sacrifices to their noble heroism.  All night long the saddened, horrified firemen worked in subduing the flames and extricating the bruised bodies of the victims.  Some still breathed, others were but slightly injured, but many more were drawn forth whose lips were still in death, their brave arms nerveless, and their hearts pulseless forever.  O, it was a night of agony, of terror and dismay!  The fireman’s risk of life is not poetry, nor a romance of zeal, or picture wrought by the imagination.  It is an earnest, solemn, terrible thing, as they could witness who stood around those blackened corses on that midnight of woe.

Hal searched with undiminished care for the noble stranger, until his worn energies required repose.  In vain did he gaze upon the recovered bodies to find that of the fireman it was not there, Towards morning they found his cap; they knew it by the strange device—­the anchor and the cross emblazoned on its front, above the number of his company.

“A fitting death for him to die!” said clergymen, as they recalled his bravery, the majesty of his mien, the benevolence of every action.

The news of the disaster spread through the city with the speed of lightning.  Friends hastened to the spot, and O, what joy for some to find the loved one safe!—­what worse than agony for others to gaze upon the features of their search all locked in ghastly death!  With conflicting emotions, Delancey told May Edgerton of his last meeting with the strange fireman.  A gush of thankfulness shot through her heart that he had not perished that dark night in Hurl Gate, that he had met an honorable doom.  Hal preserved his cap as an incentive to goodness and greatness, and longed to be worthy to place on his own the mysterious device of the stranger.

The funeral obsequies of the deceased firemen were celebrated by all the pomp esteem could propose, or grief bestow.  Mary Edgerton stood by the window as the long ranks of firemen filed round the park, all wearing the badge of mourning, the trumpets wreathed in crape, the banners lowered, the muffled drums beating the sad march to the grave.  All the flags of the city were at half-mast, the fire bells tolled mournfully, and when, wearied with their sorrowful duty, their cadences for a while died away in gloomy silence, the bells of Trinity took up the wail in chiming the requiem to the dead.  Everywhere reigned breathless silence, broken only by these sounds of woe.