On a third trial, he met
a man staggering under the load of a human body. It was neither the
place, nor was there time, to question, or to make distinctions; seizing
both in his arms, with gigantic strength, he bore them through the
smoke. He soon perceived, to his astonishment, that it was the surgeon,
and the body of one of the Skinners, that he had saved.
"Archibald!" he exclaimed, "why, in the name of justice, did you bring
this miscreant to light again? His deeds are rank to heaven!"
The surgeon, who had been in imminent peril, was too much bewildered to
reply instantly, but wiping the moisture from his forehead, and clearing
his lungs from the vapor he had inhaled, he said piteously,--
"Ah! it is all over! Had I been in time to have stopped the effusion
from the jugular, he might have been saved; but the heat was conducive
to hemorrhage; life is extinct indeed. Well, are there any
more wounded?"
His question was put to the air, for Frances had been removed to the
opposite side of the building, where her friends were collected, and
Lawton had once more disappeared in the smoke.
By this time the flames had dispersed much of the suffocating vapor, so
that the trooper was able to find the door, and in its very entrance he
was met by a man supporting the insensible Sarah.
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