s, and
they waved out behind as he dashed forward. He could hear the voice of
the Swede, screaming and blubbering. He pushed the wooden button, and,
as the door flew open, the Swede, a maniac, stumbled inward, chattering,
weeping, still screaming: "De barn fire! Fire! Fire! De barn fire! Fire!
Fire! Fire!"

There was a swift and indescribable change in the old man. His face
ceased instantly to be a face; it became a mask, a gray thing, with
horror written about the mouth and eyes. He hoarsely shouted at the foot
of the little rickety stairs, and immediately, it seemed, there came
down an avalanche of men. No one knew that during this time the old lady
had been standing in her night clothes at the bedroom door, yelling:
"What's th' matter? What's th' matter? What's th' matter?"

When they dashed toward the barn it presented to their eyes its usual
appearance, solemn, rather mystic in the black night. The Swede's
lantern was overturned at a point some yards in front of the barn doors.
It contained a wild little conflagration of its own, and even in their
excitement some of those who ran felt a gentle secondary vibration of
the thrifty part of their minds at sight of this overturned lantern.
Under ordinary circumstances it would have been a calamity.

But the cattle in the barn were trampling, trampling, trampling, and
above this noise could be heard a humming like the song of innumerable
bees. The old man hurled aside the great doors, and a yellow flame
leaped out at one corner and sped and wavered frantically up the old
gray wall. It was glad, terrible, this single flame, like the wild
banner of deadly and triumphant foes.

The motley crowd from the garret had come with all the pails of the
farm. They flung themselves upon the well. It was a leisurely old
machine, long dwelling in indolence. It was in the habit of giving out
water with a sort of reluctance. The men stormed at it, cursed it; but
it continued to allow the buckets to be filled only after the wheezy
windlass had howled many protests at the mad-handed men.

With his opened knife in his hand old Fleming himself had gone headlong
into the barn, where the stifling smoke swirled with the air currents,
and where could be heard in its fulness the terrible chorus of the
flames, laden with tones of hate and death, a hymn of wonderful
ferocity.

He flung a blanket over an old mare's head, cut the halter close to the
manger, led the mare to the door, and fairly