urned and turned their creaking wheel,
and the wind whispered in the tall larches. We heard the thump of hoofs
and wheels booming in the covered bridge. It was the doctor, come too
late. He put his head down to It's bosom (the cold trickled down our
backs), and then he said it was too late. If we had known enough, he
said, we might have saved him. We slunk away. It was very lonesome. We
kept together, and spoke low. We stopped to hearken for a moment outside
the house where the boy had lived that had the spy-glass and the "Swiss
Family Robinson." Some one had told his mother. And then, with a great
and terrible fear within us, we ran each to his own home, swiftly and
silently. We knew now why mother did not want us to go swimming.

But the next afternoon when Chuck Grove whistled in our back alley and
held up two fingers, I dropped the hoe and went with him. It was bright
daylight then, and that is different from the night.

THE FIREMEN'S TOURNAMENT

It isn't only Christmas that comes but once a year and when it comes it
brings good cheer; it's any festival that is worth a hill of beans, High
School Commencement, Fourth of July, Sunday-school excursion, Election'
bonfire, Thanksgiving Day (a nice day and one whereon you can eat roast
turkey till you can't choke down another bite, and pumpkin-pie, and
cranberry sauce. Tell you!)--but about the best in the whole lot, and
something the city folks don't have, is Firemen's Tournament. That comes
once a year, generally about the time for putting up tomatoes.

The first that most of us know about it is when we see the bills up,
telling how much excursion rates will be to our town from Ostrander
and Mt. Victory, and Wapatomica, and New Berlin, and Foster's,
and Caledonia, and Mechanicsburg--all the towns around on both the
railroads. But before that there was the Citizens' Committee, and then
the Executive Committee, and the Finance Committee, and the Committee
on Press and Publicity, and Printing and Prizes, and Decorations and
Badges, and Music, and Reception to Firemen, and Reception to Guests--as
many committees as there are nails in the fence from your house to mine.
And these committees come around and tell you that we want to show the
folks that we've got public spirit in our town, some spunk, some git-up
to us. We want our town to contrast favorably with Caledonia where they
had the Tournament last year. We want to put it all over the Caledonia
people (they thi