village, and local justice of the peace. He found him working like a
Trojan, his white whiskers ruffled into a circle about his face.

"Lend us a hand here, Code," yelled the squire, who with three other
men was attempting to get a great circular horse-trough under a huge
pump with a handle long enough for three men to lay hold of. Schofield
fell to with a will and helped move the trough into place. The squire
set the three men to the task of filling it and then went to Code.

"Any chance to save those wharfs, d'ye think?"

"No, squire. Better leave them and the fish-houses and work on
Boughton's store and the cottages. They're right in the path of the
wind. It'll be tough on Nailor and Thomas to lose their stand and
houses, but you know what will happen if the fire gets into the
dwellings."

"I thought so all along--curse me if I didn't!" yelled the judge, and
then, turning toward a crowd of men who were looking apprehensively
here and there, he shouted:

"All hands with the buckets now, lively!"

Suddenly the basement doors of Boughton's store were thrown open and a
huge, black-bearded man with a great voice appeared there.

"Buckets this way!" he bellowed, in a tone that rose clearly above the
roar and crackle of the fire. As the men reached him he handed out the
implements from great stacks at his feet--rubber buckets, wooden
buckets, tin and iron buckets, new, old, rusty and galvanized. It was
Pete Ellinwood, the fire marshal of the village and custodian of the
apparatus.

Because in the hundred or more years of its existence there has never
been water pressure in Grande Mignon, the fighting of a fire there
with primitive means has become an exact and beautiful science.

A few bold spirits had disputed the wisdom of Squire Hardy's orders to
let the wharf and fish-house burn, and had attempted to give them a
dousing. In less than five minutes they had retreated, singed and
hairless, due to a sudden explosion of a drum of oil.

"Play on Bill Boughton's store!" came the order.

Already an iron ladder reached to the eaves of the building. Two men
galloped up its length, dragging behind them another ladder with a
pair of huge hooks at the end.

Clinging like monkeys, they worked this up over their heads and up the
shingles until the hooks caught squarely across the ridge-pole of the
house. Then, on hands and feet, they trotted up this and sat astride
the ridge-pole. One of these was Code Schofield.

Oth