seated themselves
upon their haunches at a little distance and seemed to consult, grinning
and snapping their teeth from time to time at the spaniel, who cowered
almost into the ground, whimpering piteously, while her master leaned
upon his paling and laughed aloud, an insult to which the wolves
responded by throwing back their heads and uttering howls like those of
a dog baying the moon. Then suddenly leaping into the bushes they
disappeared as quickly as they came, leaving Goodman, still chuckling,
to resume his path to the village.

"We'll have a merry tale for Peter Browne this evening, won't we, Pike!"

But while the brave young fellow climbed the little hill from the brook
to The Street, this smiling expression gave place to one of
consternation, as he beheld a column of smoke and flame issuing from the
roof of the house set apart as hospital, and heard a terrified shout
of,--

"Fire! Fire!"

"Fire! Fire!" echoed Goodman running toward the spot as fast as his
tender feet would allow.

Sounder men were before him, however, and when he arrived a ladder was
placed against the side of the burning house, and Alden, with Billington
at his heels, was about to mount it, when Brewster exclaiming,--

"Here's no place for sick men," pushed both aside, ran up the ladder,
and tearing the blazing thatch from the roof flung it down in handfuls
so rapidly and effectually that in five minutes the threatened
conflagration was subdued to smoking embers and a few fugitive flames
here and there, where already the fire had fastened upon the poles laid
to support the thatch. Some buckets of water passed up by the little
crowd below soon extinguished these, and then the Elder, peeping down
through the damaged roof into the room below, cried cheerily,--

"All is safe, friends, and no great harm done."

"God be praised!" exclaimed Bradford's voice from within, and Brewster
softly said, "Amen!" as he descended the ladder less easily than he had
mounted it. At the foot he encountered Doctor Fuller, who with Standish
had just been to Cole's Hill arranging for another line of graves.

"Let me see your hands, Elder," demanded the physician in his usual dry
fashion.

"No need,'t is naught. Go look after your sick folk," replied the Elder
trying to push past, but Fuller caught him by the sleeve, exclaiming
sharply,--

"A man whose hands are needed for others as oft as thine are, has no
right to let them become useless, and 't is not