ad been a professor in a
large university until he grew too old to keep his position. Why he
should have chosen Lloydsborough Valley as the place to settle for the
remainder of his life, no one could tell.

He kept kimself away from his neighbours, and spent so much time roaming
around the woods by himself that people called him queer. They did not
know that he had written two big books about the birds and insects he
loved so well, or that he could tell them facts more wonderful than
fairy tales about these little wild creatures of the woodland.

To-night he had read later than usual, and his fire was nearly out. He
was too poor to keep a servant, so when he found that the coal-hod was
empty he had to go out to the kitchen to fill it himself. That is why he
saw something that happened soon after midnight, while everybody else in
the valley was sound asleep.

Over in the cabin by the spring-house where the boys had left the tramp
and Jonesy, a puff of smoke went curling around the roof. Then a tongue
of flame shot up through the cedars, and another and another until the
sky was red with an angry glare. It lighted up the eastern window-panes
of the servants' cottage, but the inmates, tired from the unusual
serving of the evening before, slept on. It shone full across the window
of Virginia's room, but she was dreaming of being chased by bears, and
only turned uneasily in her sleep.

The old professor, on his way to the kitchen, noticed that it seemed
strangely light outside. He shuffled to the door and looked out.

"Ach Himmel!" he exclaimed, excitedly. "Somebody vill shust in his bed
be burnt, if old Johann does not haste make!"

Not waiting to close the door behind him, or even to catch up something
to protect his old bald head from the intense cold of the winter night,
he ran out across the garden. His shuffling feet, in their flapping old
carpet slippers, forgot their rheumatism, and his shoulders dropped the
weight of their seventy years. He ran like a boy across the meadow,
through the gap in the fence, and down the hill to the cabin by
the spring.

All one side of it was in flames. The fire was curling around the front
door and bursting through the windows with fierce cracklings. Dashing
frantically around to the back door, he threw himself against it,
shouting to know if any one was within. A blinding rush of smoke was his
only answer as he backed away from the overpowering heat, but something
fell across