was
one--and he was another--doing big things. Nothing like getting down to
primeval Nature for an inspiration! "Hugging the sod," as he named it,
had had its effect not only on himself, but on his fellows. They would
never have felt that way toward him at the Magnolia. The week at
Wabacog had widened their horizon--widened everybody's horizon--as for
himself he felt like a Western prairie with limitless possibilities
ending in mountains of accomplishment.

That night, an hour after midnight, Muggles found himself sitting bolt
upright in bed. Outside, filling the air of the wilderness, bellowed
and roared the deep tones of the steam siren. Then came a babel of
voices gaining in distinctness and volume:

"Fire, FIRE, FIRE!"

Muggles sprang through the door and ran full tilt into Jackson and
Bender, who had vaulted from their beds but a second before. The next
instant every man in the bungalow, Monteith at their head, came
tumbling out, one after the other.

"Fire! Fire! Fire!" rang the cry, repeated by a hundred mill hands
rushing toward the mill. A spark had worked its way through the
arrester, some one said, had fallen into the sawed stuff, been nursed
into a blaze by the night wind, and a roaring flame was in full charge
of one pile of lumber and likely to take possession of another.

Muggles looked about him.

HIS SUPREME MOMENT HAD COME!

The blood of the Clanworthys rose in his veins. The Pass lay before
him--so did the Bridge. A full suit of dove-colored pajamas and a pair
of turned-up Turkish slippers was not exactly the kind of uniform that
either Leonidas or Horatius would have chosen to fight his way to
glory, but there was no time to change them.

With a whoop to Bender, who had really begun to believe in him, and a
commanding order to Jackson, the three stripped the costly Turkish rugs
from the lounges, and blankets from the beds, and, following his lead,
dashed through the woods to the relief of the endangered pile of
lumber. On the way they passed a gang of Canucks, carrying buckets. It
was but the work of a moment to arrange these into a posse of relays
with Bender on the lake end of the line and Jackson next the pile, the
gang passing the buckets from hand to hand.

This done Muggles snatched a ladder from an adjacent building, threw it
against the threatened lumber, skipped up its rungs like a squirrel and
stood in silhouette against the flaring blaze, his dove-gray flannels
flapping about