Page:Saunders - Beautiful Joe, 1893.djvu/292

Rh up and walked to and fro on the floor. "It was an awful scene, Margaret. I never wish to look upon the like again. Do you remember how I protested against the building of that death-trap? Look at the wide, open streets around it, and yet they persisted in running it up to the sky. God will require an account of those deaths at the hands of the men who put up that building. It is terrible—this disregard of human lives. To think of that delicate woman and her death agony." He threw himself in a chair and buried his face in his hands.

"Where was she? How did it happen? Was her husband saved, and Charlie?" said Mrs. Morris, in a broken voice.

"Yes; Charlie and Mr. Montague are safe. Charlie will recover from it. Montague's life is done. You know his love for his wife. Oh, Margaret! when will men cease to be fools? What does the Lord think of them when they say, 'Am I my brother's keeper?' And the other poor creatures burned to death—their lives are as precious in his sight as Mrs. Montague's."

Mr. Morris looked so weak and ill that Mrs. Morris, like a sensible woman, questioned him no further, but made a fire and got him some hot tea. Then she made him lie down on the sofa, and she sat by him till day-break, when she persuaded him to go to bed. I followed her about, and kept touching her dress with my nose. It seemed so good to me to have this pleasant home after all the misery I had seen that night. Once she stopped and took my head between her hands, "Dear old Joe," she said, tearfully, "this is a suffering world. It's well there's a better one beyond it."

In the morning the boys went down town before breakfast and learned all about the fire. It started in the top