And call me if aught alarms you, or if my wife should change either for the better or the worse." So saying, Lord Desborough took himself off to his well-earned repose; and the two nurses passed the night, sometimes waking and sometimes sleeping, but not disturbed by any strange sounds of explosion, and hopeful, as the night passed without special event, that the fire had been extinguished.
But morning brought appalling accounts of its spread.

Nothing had been done, it seemed, to stay its course.

It had reached Cheapside, and was rushing a headlong course down it, and even the Guildhall, men said, would not escape.

North and west the great, rolling body of the flames was spreading; churches were going down before it, one after the other, as helplessly as the timber and plaster houses, which burned like so much tinder.

Hour after hour as that day passed by fresh and terrible items of news were brought in.
Would anything ever stop the oncoming sea of fire?
Surely--surely something would be done to save St.Paul's.