"Where can there be a house in that direction?" Rose Bunker asked.
"Isn't that fire beyond the cabins, Russ?"

Russ suddenly sprang to action. He wheeled from the window and ran along
the hall to the stairway.

"Russ! Russ! Where are you going?" demanded his sister.

"Tell Daddy and Mr. Armatage. I know what house is afire. It's Mammy
June's cabin!" shouted Russ.

He had previously located the direction of the old woman's cabin by the
stream, and Russ was sure that he was right now. He left the girls
screaming after him; he had no time to tell them how he was so sure of
his statement.

Down the two flights of stairs he plunged until he landed with a bang on
the hall rug at the foot of the lower flight. He almost fell against Mr.
Armatage himself when he landed. And Daddy Bunker was not far away.

"Well, well, young man, what's this?" demanded Mr. Armatage, for a
moment quite as stern with Russ as he was with his own children.

Daddy, too, looked upon Russ with amazement. "Why, Russ," he said, "what
does this mean? What are you doing down here?"

"There's a fire!" gasped out Russ, his breath almost gone. "There's a
fire!"

"Upstairs?" demanded Mr. Armatage, whirling toward the stairway.

"Oh, no, sir! No, sir!" cried Russ, stopping him. "It's down the hill. I
saw it from the window."

"The quarters?" demanded the planter.

"No, sir. It looks like Mammy June's. It's a great red flame shooting
right up about where her cabin is."

"And the old woman has gone home. She's lame. Like enough she won't get
out in time--if it is her shack. Come on, boys!" The planter's shout
rang through the lower rooms and startled both the guests and the
servants. "There's a fire down by the branch. May be a cabin and
somebody in it. Come on in your cars and follow me. Get all the buckets
you can find."

He dashed out of the house, hatless as he was, shouting to the colored
folks who were gathered outside watching the dancing through the long
windows. Daddy Bunker followed right behind him. And what do you suppose
Russ did? Why, he could have touched Daddy Bunker's coat-tails he kept
so close to him! Nobody forbade him, so Russ went too.

Mr. Armatage and Mr. Bunker got into one of the first cars to start, and
Russ, with a water pail in each hand, got in too. There was a great
noise of shouting and the starting of the motor-cars. Men ran hither and
thither, and all the time the light of the fire down by the stream
increased.