“We started in to get ready for business,” continued Alec; “such as locating the water supply, gathering all sorts of buckets, pans, and anything that could be used for carrying the stuff when the sparks came sailing over, and threatening to set fire to the roofs of the chicken and pigeon houses.
“First we began to soak the roofs as well as we could, and all the while the fire was getting nearer. As luck would have it, there was an open space between the woods and the buildings. Old Zeke didn’t have any straw stack, or hay worth mentioning, to start going, which I counted in our favor.
“Then finally we saw the flames begin to pick up over to windward. The fire had been carried through the thick woods. It was eating up all the dry stuff on the ground, and some dead trees were beginning to look like great big burning torches or candles.
“So we worked harder than ever, with Zeke keeping on our trail, doing great stunts carrying water and helping out. Every bucket thrown gave us more hope that we’d be able to keep things safe and sound; but pretty soon we saw that here and there the roofs were beginning to smoke.
“We’d made sure to have what ladders there were about the place handy. So keeping a bright lookout, whenever a little flame was discovered on the roof of a building some of the boys hustled there with a ladder, and one went up to throw a bucket of water over it.
“That was about what our work amounted to, all the way through. None of the buildings were burned down, though we did have a few scares, and several times it took the liveliest jumping anybody ever saw to manage all the little fires that sprang up.
“And in the end the fire had swept past, the heat gradually grew less and less, so that we knew we had saved the place for the old squab raiser and chicken farmer.”
“Is that all, Alec?” asked Hugh.
“Not quite,” replied Alec, with a bright smile, as he glanced toward Dale, “we did have just one little adventure worth mentioning.”
“Stow that, can’t you, Alec?” hastily remarked Dale, who seemed to suddenly flush up, as though more or less confused; for he was known to be an exceptionally modest fellow, who neither went about “blowing his own horn,” nor liked to have any of his chums do the same for him; “it wasn’t worth mentioning in the same breath with the splendid things I’m sure Hugh and the rest have been doing.”