The Knights of the White Shield Part 30

"Miss Persnips, excuse me," said the foreman of the "Torrent," the great rival of the "Cataract," "but unless you withdraw, we shall be obliged to wash you out of the way with the hose. Play away, Three!" he roared.

"O, ma.s.sy!" screamed the shop-keeper, retiring to a safe place.

Will Somers went back to his place at the brakes of the "Cataract." As he pa.s.sed the door of the mill he looked into the entry, "What a blaze!" he said.

It was not surprising that the flames had swept forward with such rapidity. Up those old wooden stairs drying for years, greasy with the oil drippings of the mill, the fire leaped and flew even rather than leaped.

The flames were reaching out like long, forked arms, vainly clutching after the two boys that had been s.n.a.t.c.hed away. The building was now the plaything of the flames. Through it and over it, now climbing to the highest point of the old-fashioned roof, then searching down into the cellar, scorching, raging, roaring every-where, went the fire. In places unexpected the flames would show themselves, looking out like the faces of firefiends. Then they would retire a moment, only to come again and burst out with a fury that nothing could resist, a fury that raged and rioted till beams, rafters, flooring, and stair-ways were a black, ashy heap, sputtering and hissing toward the sky--a snake heap full of hot fangs.

"I wonder how that fire started," was a frequent exclamation. "Don't know," said every body save one poor, old tobacco-ridden man who confessed that he had been smoking in the waste room, the place where the fire started.

"When you see a man shoving a lighted pipe into sich a place." said Simes Badger to the gossippy circle at Silas Trefethen's store that night, "send in a bucket of water after him."

"What for? to put out the fire, or to wash him?" asked a hearer.

"Both," said Simes, "one to protect the place and the other to purify him."

The wise men all laughed, and there was some sense in the laugh that applauded the oracle.

Tim Tyler and Bob Landers had both been carried to their homes. Bob escaped serious injury, but it was found that Tim was badly burned.

"I felt it a good deal at the very first," he told Mr. Walton one day, "when, in going after my coat, I happened to open a door where the fire was, and it darted at me. You see the pain stopped, but now it has started up."

"Yes, I understand that while the first contact with the fire is painful, then what you might call a paralyzing of the nerves takes place, and feeling is benumbed. When the action of the fire ceases, and the attempt at healing sets in, the nerves try to do their duty and the pain starts up once more. I have thought that the old martyrs who were burned at the stake, while they smarted terribly at first, had an easier time after that. Bad enough to step upon the hot round of such a ladder to heaven, but it was easier climbing after that. You got confused, Tim, didn't you, in the mill, when trying to find your way back?"

"O yes; and as I said, I opened a door where the fire rushed at me. It was so smoky I wonder I ever got out at all. It seems I had some good friends."

"Yes, and G.o.d was your best friend, and he helped you, and if you are not a martyr, you can try to bear your pain as patiently as you can, and some people in bearing pain stand more than the martyrs even."

Tim looked up. "Could you--could you--say a small prayer for me? I don't want to knuckle under, but grin and bear it best I can."

When Mr. Walton came out into the kitchen where Ann was she said: "I heard Tim ask you to pray. That was a good deal for him to do. Afore, you did it without the asking, but I was glad to have him just speak up for himself.

O, he has been a softenin' since the fire, a comin' round a good deal."

"Where is your brother?"

"Mine? Tim, you mean?"

"Yes."

She only shook her head, and looked sad.

As Mr. Walton was walking home he met Tony, one of his favorites.

"Well, Tony, how is the club? Have they all got the shields Miss Barry gave them?"

"I think so, and you were very kind to promise what you did; but we don't have any meetings now."

"Don't you?"

"No, sir."

"Won't you come in and see me?"

Tony followed his friend into the clergyman's study. Then Mr. Walton found his mother and brought her into the study.

"This little fellow is one of my Sunday-school boys, and his name is Tony."

"Why," said the old mother, looking into his face, "I have seen him before."

And Tony lifted his eyes--large, l.u.s.trous, black--to the old lady's face rimmed with silver hair, and said, ingenuously,

"I don't think you ever did. I have never been here."

"But I have seen you, and I want to see you again; and you will come when you can, won't you? Where do you live?"

"At Mr. Badger's, and I came from New York with a Mr. Blanco."

"Where is your father?"

"He is in Italy."

"And that is over the sea, over the sea!" she murmured, as she returned to her sitting-room. There she stood looking at the picture of a ship, and, glancing up at the church vane, which could be seen from her window, she wondered if the weather would be easterly and rainy that day.

When they were alone, Tony said to Mr. Walton, "Do you see Tim Tyler often?"

"Pretty often."

"And they are real poor?"

"O yes."

On his way home Tony met Charlie.

"Mr. Walton says they are real poor at Tim Tyler's, Charlie. I wish I had some money to give him."

Charlie thought a minute, and then he spoke up, eagerly, "I say, Tony, let's get up a fair for him."

"That's the very thing I wanted to ask you about. Now it's strange we should both think of it."

"That's so."

"Let's shake hands on it, Charlie."

Tony and Charlie, standing on the sidewalk, shook hands cordially. "What next? The shaking of hands would not bring a fair.

"Let's go and see Miss Barry," suggested Charlie. This was in accordance with the boys' custom to refer all their troubles to this sympathetic teacher.

"We want to get up a fair for Tim Tyler," said Charlie, enthusiastically.