They surround the big building. The engines pump on water from every direction, but without effect. Flames blow out windows high in the central tower, sweep around the stone St. Joseph mounted on its face. And when the main roof burns through, a cast-iron bell falls crashing, clanging, into the cellar. By late morning, nothing's left but towering walls of granite and brick, smoke-stained.
Steam vents through holes that had been windows.
The teens, tired, have left. A hundred weary firemen have rolled up hoses, driven away. No one left by the smoldering pile. Except, silent and still, three hundred monks. For in 1883, when the building was new, a graveyard was laid out just off its southwest corner.