e next morning all
was consternation in the cottage. Dan and Olive were afraid that the
ghost would start a fire in some inaccessible place and burn the house
down. They were both convinced that it really was a ghost, "for" said
Olive, "nothing but the devil or a ghost with evil designs, could do so
terrible a thing as start a fire in a cottage at the dead of night."

Dr. Clay's theory might be true, but it was not clear to them how
electricity could go about a house gifted with the cunning of a fiend.
"It is true," said Dan, "that lightning often sets fire to houses and
barns, but it has never yet been known to roam about a man's house, as
this strange power does. And as Esther can hear it speak, and it does
whatever it says it will, why I believe it to be a ghost, or else the
devil." While Olive was churning in the kitchen one morning about three
days after the fire under the bed, she noticed smoke coming from the
cellar. Esther was seated in the dining room when Olive first saw the
smoke, and had been seated there for the last hour, previous to which
she had been in the kitchen assisting her sister to wash the breakfast
dishes as was her custom. On seeing the smoke, both she and Esther were
for the moment utterly paralyzed with fear. What they so dreaded had at
last come to pass. The house was evidently on fire, and that fire set by
a devilish ghost. What was to be done? Olive was the first to recover
from the shock. Seizing the bucket of drinking water, always kept
standing on the kitchen table, she rushed down the cellar stairs, and
was horrified at the sight which burst upon her view. There in the far
corner of the cellar was a barrel of shavings blazing almost to the
floor above. In the meantime Esther had reached the cellar, and stood
looking at the crackling flames in blank astonishment. The water Olive
had poured into the barrel was not enough to quench the flames, for in
the excitement of the moment she had spilled more than half of it on her
way down. What was to be done? The house would catch and probably be
burned to the ground, and they would be rendered homeless.

"Oh! if Dan were at home, he could put it out," Olive managed to
articulate, for both she and Esther were nearly suffocated with the
dense black smoke with which the cellar was filled, and now the barrel
itself had caught. The cellar was very small, and everything in it would
soon be blazing unless the fire could be extinguished at once.

"Oh