ere heard,
borne in on the night wind,--a shot, then another, down in the
valley,--the quick peal of the cavalry trumpet.

"It isn't taps. It's fire!" shouted Graham from the door-way. "Come on!"

V.

Down in the valley south of the post a broad glare was already shooting
upward and illumining the sky. One among a dozen little shanties and log
houses, the homes of the laundresses of the garrison and collectively
known as Sudsville, was a mass of flames. There was a rush of officers
across the parade, and the men, answering the alarum of the trumpet and
the shots and shouts of the sentries, came tearing from their quarters
and plunging down the hill. Among the first on the spot came the young
men who were of the party at Captain Rayner's, and Mr. Graham was ahead
of them all. It was plain to the most inexperienced eye that there was
hardly anything left to save in or about the burning shanty. All efforts
must be directed towards preventing the spread of the flames to those
adjoining. Half-clad women and children were rushing about, shrieking
with fright and excitement, and a few men were engaged in dragging
household goods and furniture from those tenements not yet reached by
the flames. Fire-apparatus there seemed to be none, though squads of men
speedily appeared with ladders, axes, and buckets, brought from the
different company quarters, and the arriving officers quickly formed the
bucket-lines and water dipped up from the icy creek began to fly from
hand to hand. Before anything like this was fairly under way, a scene of
semi-tragic, semi-comic intensity had been enacted in the presence of a
rapidly gathering audience. "It was worth more than the price of
admission to hear Blake tell it afterwards," said the officers, later.

A tall, angular woman, frantic with excitement and terror, was dancing
about in the broad glare of the burning hut, tearing her hair, making
wild rushes at the flames from time to time as though intent on dragging
out some prized object that was being consumed before her eyes, and all
the time keeping up a volley of maledictions and abuse in lavish
Hibernian, apparently directed at a cowering object who sat in limp
helplessness upon a little heap of fire-wood, swaying from side to side
and moaning stupidly through the scorched and grimy hands in which his
face was hidden. His clothing was still smoking in places; his hair and
beard were singed to the roots; he was evidently seriously