nd hook-and-ladder trucks through the
streets. There was a frantic rush of men and boys, some with cumbrous
fire-caps on their heads, and putting on their coats as they ran. How
they knew the location of the fire, none could guess, for it had not yet
streamed out against the sky; but know it they did; and the dove goes to
its cote not more directly than they centred from all parts of the
district upon the exact spot of the fire. Meanwhile, Uncle Ith lashed
his mighty instrument into a sonorous fury; and all the other bells
played their echo, even to the far-away tinkler on Mount Morris, which,
having few fires in its own neighborhood to report, took a pleasure in
telling its little world of those which were raging down town.

For the information of his uncle, and to atone in part for his previous
neglect, Bog devoted only a half eye to the Minford family, and kept the
rest of his optics on the fire. Just after its discovery, the smoke had
loomed up dense and black, as if it were trying to suffocate the flames
beneath. Then it changed rapidly to a light blue, and was chased faster
upward by two tongues of fire. These tongues leaped aloft with a sudden
impulse, and shed a revelation of light over acres of houses, and
brought out church steeples in vivid relief against the sky, and put a
new gilding on storm-beat en vanes and weathercocks. All this Bog
described in his own way to his uncle; and his uncle, stooping at the
lever, kept on ringing with unabated zeal; and all the other bells
banged away like an orchestra of which Uncle Ith was the leader.

Then Bog saw the forms of men suddenly spring into sight, as if out of
the very roof, between the two fiery tongues. The tongues licked the air
about them with savage whirls; but the brave fellows dodged back, and
were unhurt. Then, advancing boldly again, they released their hands
from something which they had been holding, and lo! four jets of water
struck at the very roots of the flames, tripped at them, and made them
stagger, drove them twice into the roof, and caught them with deadly
accuracy as they came out again; and, in less than five minutes, changed
all their brave splendor to dull, black smoke, and set the victor's mark
upon them--the column of white steam which arises from the half-quenched
embers, and proclaims that the fire is put out of mischief at last.

"Nothing but a kind o' white smoke, now," said Bog.

Uncle Ith, who had just rung the last stroke of a r