Mr. Miller, too, heard a pounding; only, he enough to know that it was a real pounding, upon the front door, and was no dream.
He sprang from bed, and sticking his head out of the window over the porch called:
“What’s the matter down there?”
“Are you folks all dead?” called back a man. “Get up! Your barn’s afire!”
And Mr. Miller suddenly saw that the night around-about was strangely lighted.
Ned was still striving to escape from under the scull-boat, when he was brought to the surface in a flash by his father’s commanding voice:
“Ned! Ned! The barn’s on fire!”
“Oh, dear!” Ned, striking the floor in a heap.
“Keep cool, Ned,” encouraged his father. “And dress as fast as you can.”
Trying to force his eyes open, and collect his senses, Ned for his clothes. Now the night in his room was turned to day by a glare of red light, and he could see flames reflected in the mirror of his bureau. In through the window floated a sharp crackling.
“Oh, dear!” he , again, his too-eager hands making sad work of his .
He heard his mother’s of alarm, and his father’s replies to calm her; and without, echoed the feet of running men, the cries: “Fire! Fire! Fire!” and the doleful rise and fall of the water-works whistle.
His father rushed heavily down the front stairs, and the door slammed behind him.
Ned, his clothing only half , instantly followed. As he flew through the back hall he glimpsed Maggie, her hands, quite beside herself with grief and fright.
“Oh, Neddie!” said his mother, whom he passed at the head of the stairs, her hands filled with valuables.
He did not reply, but dashed down, and out of the back door.
The whole west end of the barn, joining the wood-shed, was blazing. His father was already attacking the sliding carriage-door (fastened from within), with an ax, while a little group of spectators, anxious to help, stood about him.
“Where’s the key to this?” demanded a man, who was at the padlock of the smaller single door.
“Under the step—I’ll find it!” Ned, stooping and groping in front of the sill.
The key had slipped into a crack, but he drew it out, and put it to the padlock.
“Bob! Here, Bob! Here, Bob!” opening the door, he shouted, up the stairs just before him.
At his words the flames and smoke sucked down upon him, nearly him.
“Bob! Here, Bob! Here, Bob!” he hallooed again.
But no Bob. With a in his throat Ned sprang across the threshold, only to be seized from behind and dragged back, while the flames, disappointed, licked after him into the outer air.
“You little fool—are you trying to kill yourself?” roughly asked the man, holding him tight.
“But my dog’s in there!” cried Ned, straining to break away. “Here, Bob! Here, Bob!” he called.
“He’s a goner, then,” declared the man. “Don’t you see? The whole loft’s !”
“Y-y-yes, I see,” quavered Ned, growing limp with a sense of the awful thing that had happened. Oh, Bob, Bob, Bob!
He ceased his efforts to be free, and the man released him.
In the meantime Mr. Miller’s blows had splintered a hole so that he was enabled to reach in and lift the hook. The sliding door crashed open, and in through the smoke he dashed, seized the buggy by the rear axles, and dragged it into the yard. Its was from the heat.
Time for rescuing anything else was not given. In a fierce tide a of blaze from the burning hay above poured out between the boards, and bending inward with the draft filled the . Through the barn, top to bottom, the fire-giant with his flaming sword.
Still the water-works whistle was tooting and yodling, but not a hose cart had arrived. The crowd was growing rapidly, for the fire, fed by a ton of hay, and a quantity of grain, was up the vicinity for blocks. There was a constant volley of about the hose-companies, and a constant gazing down street for some sign of their coming; Mr. Miller was in despair; but no cart was yet on hand.
The kitchen gable was beginning to smoke. Ned hurriedly coupled the garden hose to the set in the foundation of the house, and turned the nozzle upon the paint. The stream appeared ridiculously small, and was and shattered by the storm of inrushing air.
Mr. Miller crawled through a second-story window above the kitchen roof, and hung a coverlet, hastily jerked from a bed and soaked with water, over the gable where the heat seemed worst. A line of men was formed from the pump and from the kitchen sink, up the back stairs, and passed buckets of water out to him. These he emptied over the coverlet, and here and there over the .
Below, inside, were Maggie and Mrs. Miller, the one naturally as strong as any man, the other nerved, by the crisis, to unusual strength, at the of the sink and filling pails, , wash pans, anything that might serve to supply the line of men.
Outside, with the fire baking him, behind, and the spray from the nozzle him, in front, Ned his stream. On a sudden it died away to a . The hose, under the increased pressure put on by the water-works, had burst.
Ned dropped the nozzle. At the same instant a chorus of shouts arose, and a score of hands were upstretched, pointing at a spot where, eight feet above the kitchen roof, under the exposed gable-peak of the main portion of the house a of flame was licking along.
Mr. Miller, bareheaded, his and hair by the waves of heat, from his position upon the sloping roof of the kitchen, heard the cries of warning, and saw the blaze which had passed his defenses, and was in his rear. But in vain he dashed water at it. Protected as it was by the overhanging eaves, and occupying a place awkward for him to reach, it resisted all his efforts.
“Climb up with a rope!” yelled some voices.
“Get a ladder! A ladder’s the thing!” yelled others.
But nobody seemed able to find rope or ladder, and the flame continued to grow.
Ned shot through the kitchen and up the front stairs. He bolted into his room—it was hot as a furnace, poor little room!—and snatching his ball of trot-line from the drawer where it had lain nearly a year, bolted out again. He through the open window of Mr. and Mrs. Miller’s bedchamber, and running along the roof of the front porch shinned up the water-spout and was upon the house-top. He scaled the steep , and now, balanced astride the peak, toward the farther end. The crowd saw him, and cheered.
In a moment his astonished father him perched on the burning gable.
“Ned! Go down,” exclaimed Mr. Miller.
Ned wasted no time in arguing.
“Tie a bucket or something on this,” he called, lowering his trot-line as he unwound it.
Mr. Miller grabbed a small tin pail which was just being passed out to him, and fastened it to the cord. With the water splashing from it Ned hauled it up, and the crowd of spectators watched, breathless.
All he could do was to lean over as far as he dared and dash its contents up under the eaves; a from the watchers told him that he had done no good. Although attacked from above and below, the tiny blaze lived on.
The fire had spread from the Miller barn , and by means of the on-stretching sheds was eating its way, rod by rod. The ’ next door neighbors, on the west, were battling
Join or Log In!
You need to log in to continue reading