nd owing to the fact that all the guests in the
hotel just then were girls and women, the men having gone to the city,
there really were not enough persons to cope with the flames that
followed the lightning.

"Quick!" shouted Cora, "we can get the buckets. Bess take that one,"
pointing to the pail that hung on the wall, and which was filled with
water. "Belle, run around and find another! Regina is with the
injured men, so we cannot have her, but there is a girl! Won't you
please get a bucket from the hall?" this to a very much frightened
young lady. "The fire extinguishers seem to be all emptied, and the
men are beating back the flames from the stairway."

In a remarkably short time more than a dozen frightened girls and women
had formed a bucket brigade under Cora's direction, and as fast as they
could get the pails they handed them, filled and again refilled, to the
boys, who were now doing all in their power to keep the fire from
spreading to the dining-room floor.

"What happened?" demanded one woman, when Jack turned to take a pail of
water from Cora.

"Lightning struck the boiler," replied the young man.

"Oh, mercy!" exclaimed the same unreasonable person, who was delaying
the men with her questions. "Any one hurt?"

"Yes, three," and Jack, his shirt sleeves rolled up, and looking like
the earnest worker he was, dashed again down a step into the dense
smoke to splash the pail of water on the smouldering but now
well-wetted woodwork.

It seemed then as if all the guests but our own friends had run out of
the building, and were huddled on the porch or standing in the rain
under the trees along the path.

Ed and Walter had carried the cook and the dishwasher out from the
kitchen immediately after the explosion of the boiler, and the other
injured ones were in the little cottage adjoining the hotel, where Miss
Robbins was binding up their burns and making good use of her skill and
the materials that she carried in her emergency case.

"But I am afraid this man is very dangerously injured," she told Ed.
"A piece of the boiler struck him directly on the back of the head."

"Should he go to the hospital?" asked the young man.

"Without question, if he could. But this is so far from anything like
a hospital."

"We could take him to Waterbury in Cora's car," suggested Ed. "That is
large enough to make him somewhat easy."

"The very thing! But I could not go with him. This other man is
sufferin