g anything against camp-fires. And I don't say that water is
always a friend, either, because look at floods and things like that. But
I like water better.

Only I gee whiz, I don't like it to rain in vacation.

CHAPTER XXXIX

WELCOME HOME

Now this chapter goes from the bottom of that mountain to the top of a
pineapple soda in Bennett's. That's in Bridgeboro where I live. The first
house we came to along the road we got the farmer up and told him about
the fire on the east side of Eagle's Nest, and how we got away from it. He
asked us if it was very bad.

"Jiminetty!" I said, "I don't know how bad it is, but I hope the eagles up
there have their nests insured."

Harry asked him if he had a telephone and he said, "No."

"We probably couldn't get a number if you did," Harry said; "the telephone
company reminds me of Rip Van Winkle, they seem to have gone to sleep at
the switch-board for twenty years. Have you got a flivver?"

We kind of knew he had, because they raise flivvers on all the farms up
that way. But he was a _regular_ farmer-he had a Packard, 1776 model. And,
believe me, we packed that Packard, and in ten minutes we were rolling over
the road that runs around the mountain, headed for Haverstraw.

Harry kept talking to the girls; it was awful funny to hear him. Those
other two fellows didn't have a chance at all. Gee, I was glad of it,
because what right did that fellow have to say I was just a kid? That girl
that helped us, said we were _just wonderful_. Cracky, I wouldn't say that
we're so smart, but when there's a fire we don't stand wringing our hands
as if they were a fire bell.

When we came into Haverstraw, we found the streets full of people,
everybody watching the fire on the mountain. We could see the east side
of Eagle's Nest and the fire, just as plain as if it were all on a movie
screen. It seemed kind of funny, because while we were up there we never
thought about how it would look from the village. The fire was right up on
the top of the mountain now, with little patches in other places, and we
could see a great big burned space. I guess that was the very part we had
passed through on our way up.

I could see now, even better than before, the danger we had been in. I
guess everybody in the village thought we were dead, because when we looked
away up there it just seemed as if nobody could have escaped out of all
that.

"We went out the stage entrance," Harry said, as the auto ro