"It's possible," admitted the mayor. "I'll tell Constable Stickler to be on the watch for any suspicious characters."
Bert, who heard this conversation, wondered if the tramp he had rescued from the brook, or any of his companions, had started the fire.
"I hope the one I saved didn't do it," mused the boy. "He seemed like a decent chap in hard luck." Nothing was ever learned, however, of how the fire started. Certainly the tramp stenographer had nothing to do with it.
Several members of the bucket brigade assisted the boys in getting the engine off the flatboat. In fact, of late the men fire-fighters of Lakeville were beginning to entertain different feelings toward their boy rivals. They saw that the lads meant business, and that they were a corps of very efficient youngsters. Some of the men imagined that the volunteers were only doing the thing for fun, but what happened at the lumber yard blaze convinced them that they were mistaken.
"We seem to be right in it," remarked Cole, as they were dragging the engine back to quarters a little later. "Plenty of fires for us to put out lately."
"Yes. I wonder what Mr. Bergman meant when he said he'd not forget what we did for him?" asked Vincent.
"Oh, probably he's just like old Sagger," replied Tom Donnell. "You remember, Sagger promised us a hundred dollars for helping put out the fire in his shop."
"That's so; he did."
"Yes, but we haven't seen the hundred dollars yet, and I don't believe we ever will," declared Tom. "He's too stingy to give it to us. If we had it we could finish paying for the engine and get uniforms. That's what we need. I've worn out two suits of clothes running to fires lately."
"Uniforms would be a good thing to have," admitted Bert. "We need rubber boots, especially. My feet are soaking wet. It doesn't matter so much in summer, but if we go to a fire in the winter and get wet through it won't be so nice."