eked the vamps, "fire!"

The two men crouching by the cellar window heard the rush of feet, the
engine banging and bumping across the sidewalk, its brass bell clanking
crazily, the happy vamps shouting hoarse, incoherent orders.

Through the window Sam lowered a bag of tools he had taken from
Winthrop's car.

"Can you open the lock with any of these?" he asked.

"I can kick it open!" yelled Winthrop joyfully. "Get to your sister,
quick!"

He threw his shoulder against the door, and the staples flying before
him sent him sprawling in the coal-dust. When he reached the head of
the stairs, Beatrice Forbes was descending from the clubroom, and in
front of the door the two cars, with their lamps unlit and numbers
hidden, were panting to be free.

And in the North, reaching to the sky, rose a roaring column of flame,
shameless in the pale moonlight, dragging into naked day the sleeping
village, the shingled houses, the clock-face in the church steeple.

"What the devil have you done?" gasped Winthrop.

Before he answered, Sam waited until the cars were rattling to safety
across the bridge.

"We have been protecting the face of nature," he shouted. "The only
way to get that gang out of the engine house was to set fire to
something. Tommy wanted to burn up the railroad station, because he
doesn't like the New York and New Haven, and Fred was for setting fire
to Judge Allen's house, because he was rude to Beatrice. But we
finally formed the Village Improvement Society, organized to burn all
advertising signs. You know those that stood in the marshes, and hid
the view from the trains, so that you could not see the Sound. We
chopped them down and put them in a pile, and poured gasolene on them,
and that fire is all that is left of the pickles, fly-screens, and
pills."

It was midnight when the cars drew up at the door of the house of
Forbes. Anxiously waiting in the library were Mrs. Forbes and Ernest
Peabody.

"At last!" cried Mrs. Forbes, smiling her relief; "we thought maybe Sam
and you had decided to spend the night in New Haven."

"No," said Miss Forbes, "there WAS some talk about spending the night
at Fairport, but we pushed right on."

II

THE TRESPASSERS

With a long, nervous shudder, the Scarlet Car came to a stop, and the
lamps bored a round hole in the night, leaving the rest of the
encircling world in a chill and silent darkness.

The lamps showed a flickering picture of a country