“You see,” exclaimed the commodore, “I looked out o’ my winder, and I thought this whole end of town must be burnin’. An’ after I’d got started, I heared it was your barn an’ house, an’ I reckoned I’d come on an’ lend a hand. An’ bein’ as I can’t stand a wettin’ I thought I’d mount guard over your truck, here. I’ve been burned out, myself, an’ I know how more things are lost by bein’ stole an’ damaged than by the fire itself.”
“It wasn’t necessary, quite, to carry out so much,” observed Mr. Miller, surveying, as best he could, the heap of goods.
“They was a leetle premature, that’s a fact,” agreed the commodore. “It’s a pity you ain’t goin’ to move; you’ve got a fine start at it.”
With the aid of the commodore and a few neighbors the Millers placed their household furnishings back under cover. Ned carried his cartridges indoors, again. Mrs. Miller declared that she could not sleep with her kitchen in such shape—the floor one big puddle and streaked with mud—and she and Maggie went at it with mop and broom. They not only cleaned the floor, but also the porch and the back stairs, which were wet from top to bottom with the overflow from the pails and pans.
This done, the Miller household retired to resume its broken slumbers. But during the rest of the night Ned, for his part, slumbered only by snatches, now thinking that he smelled smoke from some fire anew, and now thinking that he heard Bob appealing to him. Several times he found his pillow wet with tears, despite his efforts to shut them back.
At last he gave way, and blubbered well in the dark, while he moaned: “Bob! Dear old Bob!”
Nevertheless, all the time in his breast was a faint hope that perhaps, by hook or crook, Bob was living. It did not seem possible that he should be dead—gone forever.
However, in the morning the insurance men, poking among the ruins, found him. He was in the midst of the charred hay. The flames had scarcely touched him, and Mr. Miller said that a painless death by the thick smoke had come upon him in his burrow without his ever waking.
Ned was glad to believe it, and was happier. He took only one look at the still body of his faithful, loyal chum, and walked away across the desolated yard, scarred and marred by the midnight events. He noted naught of this desolation without, for his eyes were brimming, and within, around his heart, reigned a greater desolation.
Later, where the horse’s stall had been, were found four horseshoes—these, and nothing more. Yet the fate of Fanny appeared to Ned as nothing, beside the fate of Bob.