cation. Charlie bore the half-dead
girl to the top rung, and found the trap-door padlocked, but a thrust
from his powerful shoulder wrenched hasp and padlock from their hold,
and next moment a wild cheer greeted him as he stood on a corner of the
gable. But a depth of forty or fifty feet was below him with nothing to
break his fall to the hard earth.

"Jump!" yelled one of the onlookers. "No, don't!" cried another,
"you'll be killed."

"Hold your noise," roared Hunky Ben, "and lend a hand here--sharp!--the
house'll blow up in a minute."

He ran as he spoke towards a cart which was partly filled with hay.
Seizing the trams he raised them. Willing hands helped, and the cart
was run violently up against the gable--Hunky shouting to some of the
men to fetch more hay.

But there was no time for that. Another explosion took place inside the
building, which Charlie knew must have driven in the sides of more casks
and let loose fresh fuel. A terrible roar, followed by ominous cracking
of the roof, warned him that there was no time to lose. He looked
steadily at the cart for a moment and leaped. His friends held their
breath as the pair descended. The hay would not have sufficed to break
the fall sufficiently, but happily the cart was an old one. When they
came down on it like a thunderbolt, the bottom gave way. Crashing
through it the pair came to the ground, heavily indeed, but uninjured!

The fall, which almost stunned our hero, had the curious effect of
reviving Buttercup, for she muttered something to the effect that, "dat
was a mos' drefful smash," as they conveyed her and her rescuer from the
vicinity of danger.

This had scarcely been done when the house blew up--its walls were
driven outwards, its roof was blown off, its bottles were shattered, all
its baleful contents were scattered around, and, amid an appropriate
hurricane of blue fire, that drinking and gambling saloon was blown to
atoms.

Would that a like fate might overtake every similar establishment in the
world!

This was the first and last attempt to disturb the peace of Sweetwater
Bluff. It is said, indeed, that Crux and some of his men did, long
afterwards, make their appearance in that happy and flourishing town,
but they came as reformed men, not as foes--men who had found out that
in very truth sobriety tends to felicity, that honesty is the best
policy, and that the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.

THE END.