He said he had been there before he came home, and tried
Seymour's chimney in the music-room, and it worked like
a charm.
As they drew near Beacon Street they were aware
of unwonted stir and tumult, and presently the still
air transmitted a turmoil of sound, through which a
powerful and incessant throbbing made itself felt.
The sky had reddened above them, and turning the corner
at the Public Garden, they saw a black mass of people
obstructing the perspective of the brightly-lighted street,
and out of this mass a half-dozen engines, whose strong
heart-beats had already reached them, sent up volumes
of fire-tinged smoke and steam from their funnels.
Ladders were planted against the facade of a building,
from the roof of which a mass of flame burnt smoothly upward,
except where here and there it seemed to pull contemptuously
away from the heavy streams of water which the firemen,
clinging like great beetles to their ladders, poured in
upon it.
Lapham had no need to walk down through the crowd, gazing
and gossiping, with shouts and cries and hysterical laughter,
before the burning house, to make sure that it was his.
"I guess I done it, Pen," was all he said.
Among the people who were looking at it were a party who seemed
to have run out from dinner in some neighbouring house;
the ladies were fantastically wrapped up, as if they
had flung on the first things they could seize.
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