But while the brave young fellow climbed the little hill from the brook to The Street, this smiling expression gave place to one of consternation, as he beheld a column of smoke and flame issuing from the roof of the house set apart as hospital, and heard a terrified shout of,—
"Fire! Fire!"
"Fire! Fire!" echoed Goodman running toward the spot as fast as his tender feet would allow.
Sounder men were before him, however, and when he arrived a ladder was placed against the side of the burning house, and Alden, with Billington at his heels, was about to mount it, when Brewster exclaiming,—
"Here's no place for sick men," pushed both aside, ran up the ladder, and tearing the blazing thatch from the roof flung it down in handfuls so rapidly and effectually that in five minutes the threatened conflagration was subdued to smoking embers and a few fugitive flames here and there, where already the fire had fastened upon the poles laid to support the thatch. Some buckets of water passed up by the little crowd below soon extinguished these, and then the Elder, peeping down through the damaged roof into the room below, cried cheerily,—
"All is safe, friends, and no great harm done."
"God be praised!" exclaimed Bradford's voice from within, and Brewster softly said, "Amen!" as he descended the ladder less easily than he had mounted it. At the foot he encountered Doctor Fuller, who with Standish had just been to Cole's Hill arranging for another line of graves.
"Let me see your hands, Elder," demanded the physician in his usual dry fashion.
"No need,'t is naught. Go look after your sick folk," replied the Elder trying to push past, but Fuller caught him by the sleeve, exclaiming sharply,—
"A man whose hands are needed for others as oft as thine are, has no right to let them become useless, and 't is not in reason but they are burned."