of the burning store.

"Oh, I can see fine here!" thought Freddie. "I wish Laddie and his aunt
would hurry and come here. Wow! This is great!"

Freddie was so excited watching the puffing engines, seeing the big black
clouds of smoke, and the leaping, darting tongues of lire from the windows
of the burning building, also watching the firemen squirt big streams of
Water on the blaze, that he did not think of himself, and the first he
realized was when some one shouted at him:

"Stand back there, youngster!"

Freddie did not know he was the "youngster" meant, and stood where he was.

"Get back there!" cried the voice again. "You may be hurt!"

But Freddie was busy watching the fire. He wished he had brought his own
little engine with him.

"I could squirt water on some of the little sparks, anyhow," he said to
himself. "I guess I'll go back and get it, and find Laddie and his aunt."

Freddie was about to turn when suddenly he saw a fireman in a white rubber
coat, which showed he was one of the chiefs, or head men, rushing toward
him.

"Get back! Get back!" cried this fireman. "Don't you know you're inside
the fire lines!"

Then for the first time Freddie noticed that back of him was stretched a
rope, behind which stood the crowd of men and boys. Freddie was so small
that he had slipped under the rope, not knowing it. He had either slipped
under himself or been pushed by the throng.

"Get back! Get back!" cried the fireman.

The next instant there was a loud noise, as if a gun had been fired, and
Freddie felt himself being lifted up and carried along quickly.

CHAPTER XIV

THE STORE CAMP

The noise like a gun which Freddie heard was made when something exploded,
or blew up, in the burning store, and at first Freddie thought he had been
blown up with it and was flying through the air.

Then, as he opened his eyes (for he had closed them when the strange thing
began to happen) he saw that he was in the arms of the fireman with the
white rubber coat, and the fireman was smiling down at him.

"Am I--am I hurted?" Freddie asked.

"Bless your little heart! Of course not!" was the answer. "But you might
have been if you had stayed where you were--not so much hurt by the fire,
for that's almost out--as by the crowd. How did you get past the fire
lines?"

"I--I didn't see 'em," said Freddie. "Back in Lakeport, where I live, we
don't have fire lines, though I've got a fish line."

"Humph! You're from