s it he'll come and,
perhaps, bring help with him!"

"Hurry!" he shouted back, and I started for the barn. The distance was
short. As I reached it I glanced over to Harry's. There were some white
spots on his barn. He was signalling and, of course, could see my signal.

Excitedly I placed the flags in 1 2 3 4, and, without waiting for an
answer, tore back across the fields to the fire. It was gaining rapidly.
In a large circle, a dozen rods across, it advanced toward the buildings
on one hand and swept toward the woods on the other. We could not conquer
it. We could only hope to hinder its progress until help should arrive.

[Illustration: IN OBEDIENCE TO THE SIGNALS.]

Fifteen minutes of desperate struggle and then, with a ringing cheer,
Harry and his father dashed upon the scene. Their arrival infused me with
new courage; and four pairs of hands and four willing hearts at length
conquered the flame, two rods from the woods!

My father sank down upon a rock, and, as he wiped the perspiration from
his smutty face, he said:

"There, boys, your signalling has saved the prettiest timber lot in the
town of Hardwick! I shall not forget it!"

Were we not justly proud?

Two days after I found upon my plate at breakfast a small package, which
contained two pretty little spy-glasses.

"Perhaps they will enable you to enlarge your 'signal code,'" was all my
father said when I thanked him.

We soon found that with the aid of the glasses we could distinguish any
color. So we made a set of blue flags, which gave us thirty more
communications by using them in place of the white ones. And, by mixing
the blue flags with the white combinations and the white with the blue
combinations, over _two hundred_ communications could be signalled. Thus
we could converse with each other by the hour.

The way we wrote down the mixed combinations was, by using a heavy figure
to represent a blue flag; as 1[2]4[5], which meant that positions 1 and 4
were occupied by white flags, 2 and 5 by blue ones.

Blue flags can be inserted in the original thirty combinations in the
following manner: 1[2], 12[3], 1[23], 123[4], 12[34], 1[2]3[4], 1[23]4,
1[234], 23[5], 2[35], 234[5], 23[4]5, 2[3]45, 2[3]4[5], 2[34]5, 23[45],
2[345], and so on.

Among the many recollections that throng my memory in connection with
this subject, is that of an incident which has caused me many a hearty
laugh since its occurrence, although at the time I did not feel
par