cutting through the main beam of solid cedar, twelve by twelve, that
held tight still when the rafters and the roof tree were down already,
the shed on fire in a dozen places, and the other men driven from the
work by the flaming sparks, and by the strangle of the smoke. Not so
Mr. Smith! See him there as he plants himself firm at the angle of the
beams, and with the full impact of his two hundred and eighty pounds
drives his axe into the wood! I tell you it takes a man from the pine
country of the north to handle an axe! Right, left, left, right, down
it comes, with never a pause or stay, never missing by a fraction of
an inch the line of the stroke! At it, Smith! Down with it! Till with
a shout from the crowd the beam gapes asunder, and Mr. Smith is on the
ground again, roaring his directions to the men and horses as they haul
down the shed, in a voice that dominates the fire itself.

Who made Mr. Smith the head and chief of the Mariposa fire brigade that
night, I cannot say. I do not know even where he got the huge red helmet
that he wore, nor had I ever heard till the night the church burnt down
that Mr. Smith was a member of the fire brigade at all. But it's always
that way. Your little narrow-chested men may plan and organize, but when
there is something to be done, something real, then it's the man of size
and weight that steps to the front every time. Look at Bismarck and
Mr. Gladstone and President Taft and Mr. Smith,--the same thing in each
case.

I suppose it was perfectly natural that just as soon as Mr. Smith came
on the scene he put on somebody's helmet and shouted his directions
to the men and bossed the Mariposa fire brigade like Bismarck with the
German parliament.

The fire had broken out late, late at night, and they fought it till the
day. The flame of it lit up the town and the bare grey maple trees, and
you could see in the light of it the broad sheet of the frozen lake,
snow covered still. It kindled such a beacon as it burned that from the
other side of the lake the people on the night express from the north
could see it twenty miles away. It lit up such a testimony of flame that
Mariposa has never seen the like of it before or since. Then when the
roof crashed in and the tall steeple tottered and fell, so swift a
darkness seemed to come that the grey trees and the frozen lake vanished
in a moment as if blotted out of existence.

When the morning came the great church of Mariposa was nothing