Earl Parish finds himself among a crowd in front of a burning building, one that has noticed a small child's face in the upstairs window. Eight men, including Earl, hesitantly enter the house to rescue the child, but everyone leaves after hearing the firemen approaching. Earl, however, stays inside the house, and rescues the child from upstairs as the thin veil of smoke steadily grows. Though not a particularly dangerous rescue, he finds an inch and a half of words in the newspaper dedicated to his rescue the next day, and glows at the attention given him due to this.

Then after a while, as happens, people forget about the fire, about Earl's role in it. Even when he tries to bring it up, others brush it aside. He begins to avoid people, thinking them beneath him as he dreams up reasons for his particular significance. He had retained some part of his "ancestral courage," he thinks. He begins to treat others with disdain, a bad idea for someone working in customer service (Information counter), and is consequently fired.

Earl begins a long slog of hopping from job to job, often getting fired when he failed to do it properly, or leaving when he thought it beneath him. When he doesn't pass a physical examination to become a firefighter, he finds someone at a local newspaper to write up his story and procures another clipping proving his worth. His search continues, his life becomes harder and harder, and he becomes more and more bitter about his perceived failings of the human race.

On one hungry day, Earl starts to trail a kindly looking old man in hopes of begging a few coins from him. Instead, he comes across someone ringing for the fire station, and when he finds the fire, instantly plunges inside despite the attempts of some person to stop him. This house is much more on fire than the previous one—full of smoke and licking flames. When he glimpses, improbably, the newspaper with his original rescue in it, he realizes, finally, the insignificance of his work, and the stupidity of his current idea.

He plows on ahead upstairs, finds a small kitten, and jumps out the window with it, landing on a courageous policeman who ran to catch him. People ask for his name but he gives them a fake one, and runs away. He ends up at a shabby establishment looking for work to take him away from town before the morning papers came in.