t on table as well as I can," said Mary.

There was something cronyish and also self-helpful, in the way Jack and
Molly boiled eggs and toasted bread and fried bacon and made coffee,
and took swift turns at eating and at waiting on the table.

The editor of the _Eagle_ heard the whole of the trout item, and about
the runaway, and told Jack to send him the next big trout he caught.

There was another item of news that was soon to be ready for Mr.
Murdoch. Jack was conscious of a restless, excited state of mind, and
Mary said things that made him worse.

"You want to get somewhere else as badly as I do," he remarked, just as
they came back from taking in the pies to the dinner-table.

"I feel, sometimes, as if I could fly!" exclaimed Mary. Jack walked
out through the hall to the front door, and stood there thinking, with
a hard-boiled egg in one hand and a piece of toast in the other.

The street he looked into was silent and deserted, from the bridge to
the hotel corner. He looked down to the creek, for a moment, and then
he looked the other way.

"I believe Molly could do 'most anything I could do," he said to
himself; "unless it was catching a runaway team. She couldn't ha'
caught that wagon. Hullo, what's that? Jingo! The hotel cook must
have made a regular bonfire to fry my trout!"

He wheeled as he spoke, and dashed back through the house, shouting:

"Father, the Washington Hotel's on fire!--over the kitchen!"

"Ladder, Jack. Rope. Bucket," cried the tall blacksmith, coolly
rising from the table, and following. As for the rest, beginning with
the editor of the _Eagle_, it was almost as if they had been told that
they were themselves on fire. Even Aunt Melinda exclaimed: "He ought
to have told us more about it! Where is it? How'd it ever catch? Oh,
dear me! It's the oldest part of the hotel. It's as dry as a bone,
and it'll burn like tinder!"

Everybody else was saying something as all jumped and ran, but Jack and
his father were silent. Ladder, rope, water-pails, were caught up, as
if they were going to work in the shop, but the moment they were in the
street again it seemed as if John Ogden's lungs must be as deep as the
bellows of his forge.

"Fire! Fire! Fire!" His full, resonant voice sent out the sudden
warning.

[Illustration: _Fighting the Fire_.]

"Fire! Fire! Fire!" shouted Jack, and every child of the Ogden
family, except Mary, echoed with such voice as belonged to eac