to be used
except in time of trouble, when the case would warrant leaving everything
to obey the call. We had little expectation of its ever being used. It
was simply a whim; although, like many other things, it served a serious
purpose in the end.

Not far from my father's house stood a valuable timber lot, in which he
took an especial pride. Adjoining this was an old apple-orchard, where
the limbs of several trees that had been cut down, and the prunings of
the remainder, had been heaped together in two large piles to be burned
at a favorable opportunity. One afternoon, when there was not the
slightest breath of wind, we armed ourselves, father and I, with green
pine boughs and set the brush-heaps a-fire. We had made the heap in as
moist a spot as possible, that there might be less danger of the fire
spreading through the grass. While the flame was getting under way, I
busied myself in gathering stray bits of limbs and twigs--some of them
from the edge of the woods--and throwing them on the fire.

"Be careful not to put on any hemlock branches!" shouted my father from
his heap. "The sparks may snap out into the grass!"

Almost as he spoke a live coal popped out with a loud snap and fell at my
feet, and little tongues of flame began to spread through the dead grass.
A few blows from my pine bough had smothered them, when snap! snap! snap!
went three more in different directions. As I rushed to the nearest I
remembered throwing on several dead hemlock branches, entirely forgetting
their snapping propensity.

Bestowing a few hasty strokes upon the first spot of spreading flame, I
hastened to the next and was vigorously beating that, when, glancing
behind me, I saw to my dismay that the first was blazing again. Ahead of
me was another, rapidly increasing; while the roaring, towering flame at
the heap was sputtering ominously, as if preparing to send out a shower
of sparks. And, to make matters worse, I felt a puff of wind on my face.
Terror-stricken I shouted:

"Father! The fire is running! Come quick!"

In a moment he was beside me, and for a short time we fought the flame
desperately.

"It'll reach the woods in spite of us!" he gasped, as we came together
after a short struggle. "There isn't a neighbor within half a mile, and
before you could get help it would be too late! Besides, one alone
couldn't do anything against it!"

A sudden inspiration seized me.

"I'm going to signal to Harry!" I cried. "If he see