kicked her out to safety.
He returned with the same blanket, and rescued one of the work horses.
He took five horses out, and then came out himself, with his clothes
bravely on fire. He had no whiskers, and very little hair on his head.
They soused five pailfuls of water on him. His eldest son made a clean
miss with the sixth pailful, because the old man had turned and was
running down the decline and around to the basement of the barn, where
were the stanchions of the cows. Some one noticed at the time that he
ran very lamely, as if one of the frenzied horses had smashed his hip.

The cows, with their heads held in the heavy stanchions, had thrown
themselves, strangled themselves, tangled themselves: done everything
which the ingenuity of their exuberant fear could suggest to them.

Here, as at the well, the same thing happened to every man save one.
Their hands went mad. They became incapable of everything save the power
to rush into dangerous situations.

The old man released the cow nearest the door, and she, blind drunk with
terror, crashed into the Swede. The Swede had been running to and fro
babbling. He carried an empty milk pail, to which he clung with an
unconscious, fierce enthusiasm. He shrieked like one lost as he went
under the cow's hoofs, and the milk pail, rolling across the floor, made
a flash of silver in the gloom.

Old Fleming took a fork, beat off the cow, and dragged the paralyzed
Swede to the open air. When they had rescued all the cows save one,
which had so fastened herself that she could not be moved an inch, they
returned to the front of the barn and stood sadly, breathing like men
who had reached the final point of human effort.

Many people had come running. Some one had even gone to the church, and
now, from the distance, rang the tocsin note of the old bell. There was
a long flare of crimson on the sky, which made remote people speculate
as to the whereabouts of the fire.

The long flames sang their drumming chorus in voices of the heaviest
bass. The wind whirled clouds of smoke and cinders into the faces of the
spectators. The form of the old barn was outlined in black amid these
masses of orange-hued flames.

And then came this Swede again, crying as one who is the weapon of the
sinister fates. "De colts! De colts! You have forgot de colts!"

Old Fleming staggered. It was true; they had forgotten the two colts in
the box stalls at the back of the barn. "Boys," he said, "I must t