"Go it, Blossom," cried Bruce. "Good old girl, go it. Go on, go on.
Get ready, Bud—steady—ready now—jump!"
Bud reached far out and leaped. One foot struck the shafts. He threw himself forward and grasped the runaway's mane and in an instant he had swung himself astride the horse's back. For a moment all that he could do was cling to the swaying animal And when the horse felt the extra weight drop upon him he bounded forward like a stag uttering a shrill whinny of fear.
For a fleeting moment the lad thought of the peril of his position. But when he recalled that the lives of two women depended upon him, he became active. Reaching forward he grasped the broken line and the long one and forced the bit home into the horse's mouth. The animal snorted and plunged. Bud pulled back again. The runaway reared and pawed the air, snorting and shaking its massive bead. "Whoa," cried the scout, "whoa, boy, steady now," and it seemed as if the animal recognized the authority in his command for the next time the lad reined in the panic-stricken horse slowed up and presently came to a complete standstill and stood trembling like a leaf.
Then, when the scout looked up for the first time, there, not twenty yards away, was the railroad crossing, with the freight train rumbling slowly by.
"Fine work, Bud, fine," cried Bruce, who had pulled in on Blossom the moment the scout had jumped from the sleigh. "Fine work, and—and—gee! but it was a narrow escape."
Indeed it had been a narrow escape. Bud realized it as well as Bruce. And so did the woman and the little girl in the cutter, for their faces were white and they hardly had strength enough left to step from the cutter when Bruce tried to assist them.
"Goodness me, what a day—what a day," said the woman, trembling with nervousness. And when the little girl heard this she began to cry.
"Oh, mother, I'm unhappy, too," she wept. "Poor Nanny, poor Nanny, just think she's been burned to death, and all because you and father sent me to school last September. Oh, mother, mother, it's terrible. And then the horse acting up like that. I—I—oh, Mr.—er—Mr. Boy Scout, do you know anything about old Nanny—Nanny Haskell? She was my dear nurse. Last Fall she left our house in St. Cloud because my father and mother sent me to school down in Boston. She—she—oh, dear!—she said she wouldn't live in St. Cloud without me, because she would be too lonesome, so she came back to her old farm in the woods here, where she hadn't been for ten years, and—now—oh, dear! oh, dear;—it burned down—and—Nanny must have been burned to death."
"Why—why—no—no, she wasn't burned to death," said Bruce, when he fully understood, "she—she—why she's over in the Woodbridge hospital. That big building over there on Willow Street. We found her and took her there, and she wasn't a bit hurt, only sick, that's all."
"What! is she alive—really—honest—Nanny Haskell—boy, you're sure?" cried the woman excitedly. "We—we—came over to-day to get her and bring her back to St. Cloud. We wanted to tell her that Genevieve had come home from Boston to stay, and that we wanted her to come back with us on Christmas Eve and live with us for good. Are you sure—?"