nd was carrying a shower of sparks from the burning
building to the roof of a cutting-mill near by, where tons of powder
lay. For one of the sparks to reach the tiniest powder train would mean
the blowing up of this mill, and almost certainly the blowing up of
another and another by the concussion, for it is in vain that they try
to protect powder-mills by scattering them over wide yards in many
little buildings. When one explodes, the great shock usually sets off
others, as a falling rock turns loose an avalanche.

All this young Dupont realized in a single glance. There would be an
awful disaster presently, with many lives imperiled, unless those
falling firebrands could somehow be kept off that roof. To know this was
to act. Millionaire or not, peril or not, it was his plain duty as a
Dupont to fight those sparks, and, without a moment's wavering, he
turned back and scrambled up the bank.

[Illustration: YOUNG DUPONT WORKING TO SAVE THE POWDER-MILL.]

"Come on, boys!" he cried; "start the bucket line," and a moment later
he was climbing to the roof of the threatened mill, where he did all
that a brave man can do--stamped out the falling embers, dashed water
again and again upon the kindling fire as the men passed up full
buckets, and for a time seemed to conquer. But presently the fire flamed
hotter, the sparks came faster, and the water came not fast enough. He
saw--he must have seen--that the struggle was hopeless, that the mill
beneath him was doomed, that the explosion must come soon. From the
ground they shouted, calling on him to save himself. He shouted back an
order that they pass up more water, and keep passing water. There was
only one thing in the world he wanted--water.

The men below did their best, but it was a vain effort, for in those
days the roofs of powder-mills were made of pitch and cement--not of
iron, as to-day--and by this time the fire had eaten its way nearly
through. Alexis Dupont, working desperately, stood there with flames
spreading all around him. It was plain to every one that the minutes of
his life were numbered. Again they shouted--and--

The explosion came like an execution, and out of the wreck of it they
bore away his crushed and broken body. The last thing he knew was that
he had played the game out fairly to the end--he died like a Dupont,
said the men.

Such was the spirit of the second generation (Alexis Dupont was a son of
old Eleuthere, founder of the line), and later