coiled from the engine and were carried
wriggling in where the flames lapped along baseboard and floor-beams.
You saw the little ripples of smoke swell into huge, cream-edged billows
that tumbled out and up so far above that you lost sight of them.

Sometimes there came dull explosions, when smoke and flame belched out
about you. Sometimes stones and bricks and cornices fell near you. But
you were not to flinch or stir until Lannigan, who watched all these
happenings with critical and unwinking eyes, gave the word.

And after it was all over--when the red and yellow flames had ceased to
dance in the empty window spaces, when only the white steam-smoke rolled
up through the yawning roof-holes--the ladders were re-shipped, you left
the purring engines to drown out the last hidden spark, and you went
prancing back to your House, where the lonesome desk-man waited
patiently for your return.

No loping rush was the homeward trip. The need for haste had passed. Now
came the parade. You might toss your head, arch your neck, and use all
your fancy steps: Lannigan didn't care. In fact, he rather liked to have
you show off a bit. The men on the truck, smutty of face and hands,
joked across the ladders. The strain was over. It was a time of
relaxing, for behind was duty well done.

Then came the nice accuracy of swinging a sixty-foot truck in a
fifty-foot street and of backing through a fourteen-foot door wheels
which spanned thirteen feet from hub rim to hub rim.

After unhooking there was the rubbing and the extra feeding of oats that
always follows a long run. How good it was to be bedded down after this
lung stretching, leg limbering work.

Such was the life which Old Silver was leading when there arrived
disaster. It came in the shape of a milk leg. Perhaps it was caused by
over-feeding, but more likely it resulted from much standing in stall
during a fortnight when the runs had been few and short.

It behaved much as milk legs usually do. While there was no great pain
the leg was unhandsome to look upon, and it gave to Old Silver a
clumsiness of movement he had never known before.

Industriously did Lannigan apply such simple remedies as he had at hand.
Yet the swelling increased until from pastern to hock was neither shape
nor grace. Worst of all, in getting on his feet one morning, Silver
barked the skin with a rap from his toe calks. Then it did look bad. Of
course this had to happen just before the veterinary ins