tively.

His quick eye saw that the stack was doomed. What troubled him more than
that was the imminent danger to half-a-dozen other stacks nearly
adjoining it.

"All Farmer Dale's hay!" gasped the perturbed lad. "Fifty tons, if
there's one. If all that goes, what shall I do?"

Andy took in the whole situation with a vivid glance. Then he made a
bee-line dash for a broken stack against which rested a large
field rake.

It was broad and had a very long handle. Andy ran with it towards the
blazing heap of hay and set to work instantly.

"This won't do," he breathed excitedly, as an effort to beat out the
spreading flames only caused burning shreds to fill the air. These
threatened to ignite the contiguous stacks.

Once the first of these was started they would all go one after the
other. They were out of the direct draught of the light breeze
prevailing. What cinders arose went straight up high in the air. The
main danger threatened from the stubble.

Creeping into this from the base of the haystack in flames, little
pathways of fire darted out like vicious serpents.

Andy made for these with the rake. He beat at them and scraped the
ground. He stamped with his stockinged feet and pulled up clumps of
stubble with his hands.

The trouble was that so many little fires started up at so many
different spots. Finally, however, the ground was a mass of burned-out
grass for twenty feet clear around the centre of the blaze.

The haystack was sinking down a glowing mass, but now confined itself
and past spreading out.

Andy flung himself on the ground fairly exhausted. His hands and face
were somewhat blistered, and he was wringing wet with perspiration.

He looked pretty serious as he did "a sum out of school."

"That stack held about two tons and a-half," he calculated. "I heard a
farmer at the post-office say yesterday that he was getting eight
dollars in the stack for hay. There's twenty dollars gone up in smoke.
Where will I ever get twenty dollars?"

Andy became more and more despondent the longer he thought of the dismal
situation.

He stirred himself to action. With the rake he heaped together the
brittle filaments of burned hay.

"It can't spread any now," he decided finally. "It's dying down to
nothing. Now then, what's next?"

Andy took a far look in all directions. The fire had burned so rapidly
and clear in the crisp light air that it did not seem to have been
observed in the village.

Andy wo