burn. I could not know the good thing that was later to come
out of it.

It was so hot that I could not go behind Fitzsimmons's, so I dragged
my ladder across the drifts of the street and through between the
hotel and Hawkey's. When I came out in the rear of these I was
startled to find a small blaze on the barn roof. I hurried to the barn
with my ladder, got it in place, and then with pails of water from the
well I managed to put it out. Once more it caught, and once the roof
of the shed where Pike shot Allenham blazed up; but I dashed water on
the fires and saved both buildings.

At last the stable fire began to die down. The current of air from the
northeast had become stronger, and the column of smoke was swaying
more and more to the southwest. Just as daylight began to appear in
the east the last remaining timber of the stable fell, and, though
there was a great cloud of sparks and still much heat, I saw that
unless a strong east wind should spring up there was no longer danger
that the town would be consumed. By this time I was cold and stiff, my
face scorched by the fire, and my clothes frozen with the water from
the pailfuls I had carried. I went into the hotel.

Kaiser was so glad to see me that he reared up and put his forepaws on
my shoulders. I was patting and praising him, when suddenly the
question, What caused the fire? flashed into my mind. There had been
no trace of Pike. From the windmill tower I had been unable to see any
trail leading from the way he would come. There was no explanation
except that it must have been caused by the same thing that had made
me so much other trouble. Till it was broad daylight I paced up and
down the office floor, unable to stop. For two days I thought of
little else, and brooded on it till I was half sick.

It seems to me as I look back at it that every time I got fairly
desperate through lonesomeness or pure fright I went and dug a snow
tunnel. I was as bad as a mole for tunnels; and I meant to tell about
my system before this; but so many things keep popping into my mind,
what with my memory and with the old hotel register and the letters to
my mother lying spread out before me, that I have not once got around
to mention any of them except the first, which connected the hotel and
the bank, directly across the street. I was so taken up with this that
soon after New-Year's I decided to build some others.

I was keeping up at that time five fires (or smokes) besides