It is the unconsidered trifles of life which oftentimes shape human destinies.

And what trifle is there of less importance than a window-curtain swayed by the midnight breeze?

There was such a curtain swinging idly in the window of a dimly lighted room as the clocks in the tall church towers tolled the solemn hour of midnight. The wind was high now, and the snow, which had been falling for nearly six hours, was heaped upon the roofs of the tall houses, and lay in huge drifts about the streets, while the flakes which filled the keen winter air were blown so sharply in the faces of pedestrians that men found walking possible only by keeping to the middle of the street, and bending their heads down to the sharp blasts. Now and then a policeman, muffled up to his eyes, walked along, trying the doors of shops and other places of business to see that thieves were not busy during the storm.

As the night wore on, the passers-by appeared 338at rarer intervals, and the snow, undisturbed by man or beast, allowed itself to be whirled and twisted by the wind into fantastic shapes, that changed with every fresh gust. One o’clock sounded from many a brazen tongue, and the wind, as if it heard in the sharp, vibrant note a new signal, seemed to grow suddenly in strength and swept across the city with fiercer and louder blasts, while the snow fell in blinding masses on roof and pavement.

The same wind coming with awful fury up the broad, deserted avenue, struck with full force against the splendid hotel, and pouring through the half-open window in the dimly lighted room set the white window-curtain swaying and flapping with renewed life.

“An awful night for a fire!” muttered a belated citizen, as he mounted his doorstep and shook the snow from his clothing in his marble-tiled vestibule.

It was indeed an awful night for a fire, but the cold and weary citizen dismissed all anxiety from his mind, and sought his bed, happy in the knowledge that there were scattered about the great sleeping city fire-engines, with swift horses to draw them, and companies of vigilant, courageous men ready to hurry to 339the scene of disaster at a moment’s warning. And very soon the belated citizen slept too, while the storm outside raged with increased fury, and the snow swept down from the heavens and was piled in great drifts beneath the shadows of the tall building.

And down in Chief Trask’s quarters nearly a mile away Bruce Decker slumbered peacefully, with his turnout on the floor beside him, while the horses stamped uneasily in their stalls, and the two men on watch sat close to the stove and talked in low tones about fires that they had known on just such windy, snowy nights in years gone by. Outside the truck-house the wind howled dismally, and the snow swept through the street in pitiless, blinding gusts, while up-town the same blasts paused for a moment in their northerly flight to play with the white window-curtain that was swinging and flapping now with increased violence in the half-lighted chamber.

And throughout the storm Bruce slept as calmly as a child, knowing nothing of all that that window-curtain meant for him. A gust fiercer than the others tore the light band which held the curtain to the wall and sent it fluttering against the gas jet. It blazed up and caught the woodwork about the window and 340then another gust of wind, pausing in its swift flight to the far north, scattered the blazing particles about the room, and fanned the flames that were eating their way through the handsome woodwork. Outside, beneath the window where the curtain had flapped for a moment before, the snow lay in huge untrodden drifts. There was no one there to note the blaze which had started in the room on the fifth floor, nor was there any chance watcher in the silent houses over the way to give the alarm.

It was twenty minutes after one when the idle wind blew the curtain against the flame, and at precisely twenty-five minutes of two a servant rushed, bareheaded, into the street, and, breaking for himself a path through the heavy drifts of snow, made straight for a lamp-post with red glass in its lamp that stood two blocks away. There was a red box on this lamp-post, and, although his fingers were numb with cold, the servant had it open in a jiffy, and in another second had pulled down the hook which he found inside. Before he had removed his hand from the box the number of the station had been received at headquarters and the night operator had sent the alarm to the companies in the immediate 341vicinity of the fire. A few seconds later half a dozen truck and engine companies, warned by the electric current, had started from their quarters and were on their way through the fierce, pelting storm. The men were buttoning their coats and pulling their fire-helmets well down over their heads as they were borne on truck and engine through the silent streets. There was no time for ceremony or roll-call in the houses into which the electricity had come with its dread warning. Not one of those men against whose stern, set faces the wind blew the keen flakes of snow, knew what awaited him at the end of this midnight journey. They were actuated by but one purpose, and that was to be at the fire as soon as possible.

And as the firemen bore down in swift flight from the four points of the compass upon the doomed structure, servants went hurrying through the corridors, knocking on every door and arousing the sleeping guests with shrill cries of “Fire!” Men, women, and children were emerging from their rooms, some calm and cool, others stricken with an awful terror, some in their night-clothes, and others partly dressed, and all hurrying as fast as they could to the staircase or elevator.

342And then a cry went up in every corridor, “The elevator’s afire! Make for the staircase!”

It was indeed true. The elevator shaft, acting as a draft like the tall chimney of a manufactory, had drawn the flames toward itself with resistless force, and the fire was now roaring and raving up the square shaft, burning the woodwork and spreading destruction from floor to floor.

A stranger, seeing the awful conflagration that had broken out so suddenly on that night of storm and snow, would have said, without hesitation, that the city was doomed to a repetition of that hurricane of smoke and flames that............