effect upon the fire at St. Michael's
Church at Manitou; willing hands and loving Christian hearts would have
been helpless to save the building without the scientific aid of the
Lebanon fire-brigade. Ingolby, on founding the brigade, had equipped it
to the point where it could deal with any ordinary fire. The work it had
to do at St. Michael's was critical. If the church could not be saved,
then the wooden houses by which it was surrounded would be swept away,
and the whole town would be ablaze; for though it was Autumn, everything
was dry, and the wind was sufficient to fan and spread the flames.

Lebanon took command of the whole situation, and for the first time in
the history of the two towns men worked together under one control like
brothers. The red-shirted river-driver from Manitou and the lawyer's
clerk from Lebanon; the Presbyterian minister and a Christian brother
of the Catholic school; a Salvation Army captain and a black-headed
Catholic shantyman; the President of the Order of Good Templars and a
switchman member of the Confraternity of the Blessed Sacrament slaved
together on the hand-engine, to supplement the work of the two splendid
engines of the Lebanon fire-brigade; or else they climbed the roofs of
houses, side by side, to throw on the burning shingles the buckets of
water handed up to them.

For some time it seemed as though the church could not be saved. The
fire had made good headway with the flooring, and had also made progress
in the chancel and the altar. Skill and organization, combined with good
luck, conquered, however. Though a portion of the roof was destroyed and
the chancel gutted, the church was not beyond repair, and a few thousand
dollars would put it right. There was danger, however, among the smaller
houses surrounding the church, and there men from both towns worked with
great gallantry. By one of those accidents which make fatality, a small
wooden house some distance away, with a roof as dry as wool, caught fire
from a flying cinder. As everybody had fled from their own homes
and shops to the church, this fire was not noticed until it had made
headway. Then it was that the cries of Madame Thibadeau, who was
confined to her bed in the house opposite, were heard, and the crowd
poured down towards the burning building. It was Gautry's "caboose."
Gautry himself had been among the crowd at the church.

As Gautry came reeling and plunging down the street, someone shouted,
"Is there