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derly they laid it in a cleared space in the roadway beside two other still shapes covered with a torn curtain. Someone stepped forward and covered the small body with a rain-coat.

James Harley stopped short as he glimpsed the flaxen hair spreading beyond the kindly covering. He stared, blanched, and choked. He put out a hand for support as his knees trembled uncontrollably. A woman’s hand caught it, and he started as though he were stung. He moved forward fearfully. Not for a moment did he doubt who lay beneath the rain-coat.

He knew that he had found his child.

He sank upon his knees, unhindered by the crowd, and lifted a corner of the coat fearfully.

Joan stared at him with sightless eyes. Her face was blackened with smoke and dust; her right hand was raised as though to shield her head, and from between the tiny clenched fingers there protruded the bright edge of a new shilling.

James Harley sobbed, and called her name. He lifted the coat a little further, then dropped it with a cry of anguish. He crouched down and covered his face with his hands. The fire had taken the child’s legs.

He knelt so for many minutes, his agony respected by the silent crowd; then the woman who had caught his hand touched his shoulder gently.

He looked up and moved obediently. Two grim-faced rescuers laid another body where he had knelt. It was but a charred and twisted effigy of a human—a woman.

“We found ’em together,” one of the men said in a low voice.

James Harley shrank in horror from the ghastly figure. He staggered back into the crowd, throwing his arm before his eyes to shut out the horror. He cried out with a strange animal cry of pain, then he raised his face and his clenched fists to the bright sky and cursed Heaven and Patricia Weybourn.