"Who will save him?" he screamed, and he turned toward Victor, who
intuitively drew back from incurring the great peril.
There was no one to volunteer, and Arthur said,
"I will do it myself."
Instantly a hundred voices were raised against it. It were worse
than madness, they said. The fire must have caught in the vicinity
of that room, and Richard was assuredly dead.
"He may not be, and if he is not, I will save him or perish too,"
was Arthur's heroic reply, as he sprang up the long winding
stairs, near which the flames were roaring like some long pent up
volcano.
He reached the door of the Den. It was bolted, but with superhuman
strength he shook it down, staggering backward as the dense cloud
of yellowish smoke rolled over and around him, warning him not to
advance. But Arthur heeded no warning then. By the light which
illumined the entire front of the house, he saw that two sides of
the room were not yet touched; the bed in the recess was unharmed,
but Richard was not there, and a terrible fear crept over Arthur
lest he had perished in his attempt to escape.
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