dy hands, trembling in haste, the Cap'n drew his long, fat
wallet and counted out the bills. Brackett eyed him hungrily.

"You might jest as well settle with me now as later through the law,"
he cried.

But the Cap'n butted him aside, with an oath, and climbed into the
wagon.

"You drive as though the devil had kicked ye," he yelled to Todd.
"It's my hoss, and I don't care if you run the four legs off'm him."

Half-way to Ide's, a man leaped the roadside fence and jumped up and
down before them in the highway. He had a shotgun in his hands.

"It's my brother--Voltaire," shouted Marengo, pulling up, though
Cap'n Sproul swore tempestuously. "You've got to take him on. He
b'longs to your fire comp'ny."

"I was out huntin' when I heard the bell," bellowed the new passenger,
when he had scrambled to a place behind the wagon-seat, his back
toward them and his legs hanging down. "I'm fu'st hoseman, and it's
lucky you came along and giv' me a lift." He set his gun-butt down
between his knees, the muzzle pointing up.

Cap'n Sproul had his teeth set hard upon a hank of his grizzled
whiskers, and his eyes on the smoke ahead. Todd ran his wheezing horse
up the ridge, and when they topped it they beheld the whole moving
scene below them.

Men were running out of the burning house, throwing armfuls of goods
right and left. The "Hecla" was a-straddle of the well, and rows of
men were tossing at her brake-beams.

"Give her tar, give her tar!" yelled the man behind, craning his thin
neck. Todd lashed at the horse and sent him running down the slope.
At the foot of the declivity, just before they came to the lane
leading into Ide's place, there was a culvert where the road crossed
a brook.

The boarding in the culvert made a jog in the road, and when the wagon
struck this at top speed its body flipped behind like the tongue of
a catapult.

The man with the gun, having eyes and senses only for the fire and
his toiling fellow-Ancients, was unprepared. He went up, out, and
down in the dust, doggedly clinging to his gun. He struck the ground
with it still between his knees. The impact of the butt discharged
both barrels straight into the air.

Flanked by a roaring fire and howling crowd, and bombarded in the
rear, even a horse with a bone spavin and the heaves will exhibit
the spirit of Bucephalus. One of the rotten reins broke at Marengo's
first terrified tug. In less time than it takes to tell, Cap'n Aaron
Sproul, desperat