HE HELD FAST!
"Git in ef you ken," he said to the fireman. "I'll try Her!" He fastened the shaggy great-coat up to his chin as he faced the pursuing fires, walked forward to the stand where lapped and curled the fiercest flames, laid hold of steam-brake and the lever by which he "drove" the engine. His fur-lined gauntlets scorched and shrivelled as he grasped the bar; the fire seized upon his hair and garments with an exultant roar. He held fast. He must get the passengers off the floorless bridge that might ignite at any moment. He must check the engine as soon as he cleared the last pier, or the cars would take fire before they could be uncoupled. He shut his eyes from the maddening heat and glare, and drove straight on. Not so fast as to hurry the greedy flames that were doing their worst upon him, but at a rate that ran them over the river and upon solid earth as the fuel in the tender burst into a blaze and the forward car began to crackle and smoke in the hot draught. At that point steam and air-brakes did their work in effecting a safe halt.
"The fireman was badly scorched," reported the press next day, "but train and passengers were saved by the heroism of the engineer."
The words flashed along the wires over land and ocean; were set up in startling type in hundreds of newspaper offices while he who did not know heroism by name was breathing his last on a mattress laid on the yellow-painted floor of the room he had seen so "clear" when the engine-throb and piston-beat played Home, Sweet Home. The sunshine that had followed the rain touched the white cheek of the opened lily before falling on his sightless eyes and charred right hand.
When they brought him in he knew whose silent tears dropped so fast upon his face, and the poor burned lips moved in a husky whisper. The wife put her ear close to his mouth not to lose his dying words:
"I was afraid you'd see that we was a-fire. From the winder. I hope you—didn't—wake Junior!" The boy who had begged his father to be a hero!
BENNY'S WIGWAM.
"Now, Pettikins," said Benny Briggs, on the first day of vacation, "come along if you want to see the old Witch."
Pettikins got her little straw hat, and holding Benny's hand with a desperate clutch, trotted along beside him, giving frequent glances at his heroic face to keep up her courage. Her heart beat hard as they took their way across to the island. The island is really no island at all, but a lonely, lovely portion of Still Harbor, between Benny's home and Grandma Potter's, which by means of a small inlet and a little creek, and one watery thing and another, is so nearly surrounded by water as to feel justified in calling itself an island. They crossed over the little bridge that took them to this would-be island, and following an almost imperceptible wood path, came within sight of the Witch's hut. It was a deserted, useless, wood-chopper's hut, which the mysterious creature whom the children called a witch had taken possession of not long before. Here Fanny drew back. "O Benny, I am afraid," said she.
"Humph! she can't hurt you in the daytime," said Benny. "She ain't no different in the daytime from any other old woman. It's only nights she is a witch."
Fanny allowed herself to be led a few steps further, and then drew back again. "O Benny," said she, "there's her broomstick! there it is, right outside o' the door—and O Benny, Benny, there's her old black cat!"
"Wal, what on it, hey? What on it?" creaked a dreadful voice close behind them. Then, indeed, Fanny shrieked and tried to run, but Benny's hand held her fast. She hid her face against Benny's arm and sobbed.
It was the old Witch her very self. She looked at them out of her glittering eyes—O how she did look at them!—with her head drooped until her chin rested on her chest. This seemed to bring the arrows of her eyes to bear upon the enemy with greater force and precision.
"There ain't any law ag'in my having a cat and a broomstick, is there?" she asked in a voice like the cawing of a crow, bringing her staff down with a thump at the words "cat" and "broomstick." "What are you skeered of?"
"Why, you're queer, you know," said Benny desperately.
"Queer, queer?" piped the Witch; and then she laughed, or had a dreadful convulsion, Benny couldn't tell which, ending in a long, gurgling "Hoo-oo-oo!" on a very high key. "Now, s'pose you tell me what is 't makes me queer," said she, sitting down on a log and extracting from the rags on her bosom a pipe, which she prepared to smoke.
"Whew!" whistled Benny, "'twould take me from now till Christmas; I'd rather you'd tell me."
The crone lighted her pipe. The match flaring upon her wrinkled, copper-colored face and its gaunt features made her hideous. Poor little Fanny, who ventured to peep out at this moment, sobbed louder, and begged to go to her mother. The old woman puffed away at her pipe, fixing her gaze upon the children.
"Got a mother, hey?" said she.
"Yes."
"And a father?"
"Yes."
"Um-m-m."
She puffed and gazed.
"You wouldn't like to see 'em shot?"
At this Benny stood speechless, and Fanny set up such a cry to go home that Benny was afraid he should have to take her away—that is, if the Witch would let him. He began to consider his chances. Still the more terrible the old Witch seemed, the more Benny wanted to see and hear her. He whispered to Fanny:
"She won't hurt you, Pettikins—she can't; I won't let her. Hush a minute, and see what I'm going to say to her!"
Fanny hushed a little, and Benny fixed an audacious gaze upon the Witch—or a gaze which he meant should be audacious. "What is the matter with you?" said he.
The old woman removed her pipe and sat holding it with her forefinger lapped over it like a hook.
"They call it 'exterminated,'" said she, pushing back the broad-brimmed, high-crowned man's hat that she wore, and showing her gray, ragged locks. "I'm exterminated. You don't know what that is, I s'pose?"
"Exterminated, ex-ter-min-ated," said Benny, scratching his head, "why, to—to—drive out—to—ah—put an end to—to—to—destroy utterly."
"I don't know what your book meaning is. I didn't get mine from books. I got it all the way along—began to get it when I wasn't much bigger'n that little gell," said the Witch, pointing at Fanny with her pipe. "I didn't know what it meant when I first heard it, but I know now. Hoo-oo-oo-oo!"
"I wish you'd tell us about it," said Benny. "Tell us about beginning to learn it when you wa'n't much bigger'n Pettikins."
"That's when the colonel said we must move west'ard," said the witch, laying her pipe down on the log, leaning her elbows on her knees, and resting her bony jaws in the palms of her hands. "Injuns, before they're exterminated, stick to their homes like other folks."
