the woman, tossing her head in the direction of Tom
Davis,--"they say him and some other fellows was in 'mong the lumber this
afternoon, drinkin', you know, and smokin'. Most likely a match dropped,
or ashes from their pipes. Drunken men ain't reasonable about them
things," she added, with the simplicity of experience. "They don't stop
to think they're burnin' up money, an' whiskey too; for Dobbs don't trust
'em, now the mill is shut down."

"Yes," said another woman who stood by, "them men! what do they care?
You," she shouted, shaking her fist at Tom,--"you'll starve us all, will
ye? an' your poor wife, just up from her sick bed! I do' know as she'll
be much worse off, though, when he is out of work," she added, turning to
Helen--"fer every blessed copper he has goes to the saloon."

"Yer man's as bad as me," Tom protested, stung by her taunts and the
jeers of the cripple.

"An' who is it as leads him on?" screamed the woman. "An' if he does take
a drop sometimes, it wasn't him as was in the lumber-yard this afternoon,
a-settin' fire to the boards, an' burnin' up the food and comfort o' the
whole town!"

Tom hurled a torrent of profanity at the woman and the cripple
collectively, and then stumbled towards the road with the crowd, for the
fire was approaching the side of the yard where they stood, and beating
them back into the village street.

The air was filled with the appalling roar and scream of the flames;
showers of sparks were flung up against the black sky, as with a
tremendous crash the inside of one of the piles would collapse; and
still the engine did not come.

"Hurry! hurry!" the women shouted with hoarse, terrified voices, and some
ran to the edge of the bluff and looked down at the river.

The men were hurrying; but as they drew the long-unused engine from its
shed, an axle broke, and with stiff fingers they tried to mend it. Some
had had to run for axes to break the ice, and then they pushed and
jostled each other about the square hole they had cut, to dip up the
dark, swift water underneath; and all the while the sky behind them grew
a fiercer red, and the very ice glared with the leaping flames. At last,
pulling and pushing, they brought the little engine up the slope, and
then with a great shout dragged it into the outskirts of the yard. They
pumped furiously, and a small jet of water was played upon the nearest
pile of boards. A hissing cloud of steam almost hid the volunteer
firemen, but