Almost before Mr. Langer could get under way, his dray was lightened of its load of Black Eagles, who scrambled to the ground, following Bunny and Bonfire at a dead run.
"It's not a little blaze," panted the observant Bonfire. "Look how that smoke hangs in a cloud over the trees. It's coming from the top of some building."
"It's the Crawford house!" Specs urged, as he sprinted up to the two leaders. "You can tell it's the Crawfords', because—No, it isn't either. It's—"
Bunny, Bonfire and Specs came to a paralyzed halt. In one voice, they finished the sentence:
"—Grady's barn!"
Already that building had loomed into sight. From an opening near the peak of the roof, smoke was leisurely twining into the air, as if it had a perfect right to be doing that sort of thing in that sort of a place. No one else in town seemed to have noticed the warning, and a thicker puff of smoke brought no answering cry of "Fire!"
"Let her go!" said Specs spitefully. "We will turn in an alarm and keep it from burning anything else, but we might just as well let the old shack go up in smoke. Grady has it insured."
"But Sheffield's automobile is in there," protested Bonfire, "and that isn't insured. I heard Roy say so."
"That's what I thought," Specs agreed calmly. "But Mister Royal Sheffield thinks we haven't any business monkeying with fires this morning, and I vote we go back to the station and tell him that we were mistaken and that he was right."