“Well, no, ma’am,” said Harry, “I do not. He was too small for any circus company to take along, and there wasn’t anybody belonging to him that he knew of anywhere; and I don’t quite believe that folks who live out West care so much about children who are left alone as you do.”
“O, yes, Harry. Kind folks live everywhere, only one does not always seem able to find them.”
“No!” said Harry. “I went a long ways and waited a good while, and now as soon as I get well, won’t you please find some work for me to do, so that I can pay back Mrs. Dobson?—for she isn’t very rich, I don’t think.”
“Why, Harry Cornwall!” exclaimed Kate. “There’s plenty of work for you to do. There’s your cornfield to take care of, for one thing.”
“My cornfield!” laughed Harry, thinking that Kate was making fun of him, and quite ready to join in her merriment, but Mrs. Hallock quickly bade Kate to be quiet; and immediately she asked Harry to tell how he escaped from the fire.
“My father’s house,” said Harry, “was not very far from Rock Falls, on the shore of the lake—Lake Huron, I mean—and the Saturday before the great fire burned Rock Falls, my father went into the village and took me with him. After we started for home—it was almost night then—the smoke grew thick away off in the distance, and some men we met told father that they wanted him to go with them and help fight the fire down, for fear ’twould get to the houses. He didn’t know what to do with me, but I told him I could run right back and find a place to stay.
“‘Go to my house! go to my house,’ said three or four of the men, and so my father told me to jump out and take good care of myself, and I called back to him to take care of mother, and then I went back. On the way, I met some little children, and they asked me where I was going—so I told them what father had gone to do, and that I was going to somebody’s house, somewhere, to stay all night, and they said: ‘You can come to our house and stay.’ So I went home with them and the next day was Sunday. Sunday night it looked awful when it grew dark to see the fires burning all around, except on the side where the lake was, but we were told to go to bed and if the fire came any nearer we should be called. We were called and shaken and pulled from our beds and bidden, with blankets in our arms, to run for Mr. Huxtable’s house on the shore of the lake. When we got there we pounded and screamed at every door and window. Presently a door opened and out rushed the entire family, eight in all, and in their night clothes. The fire was so hot as it came down, like—I don’t know what it was like—only it was so awful that nobody could tell about it. It burned us as we ran, Mr. Huxtable crying out, ‘Come! Come to the lake! the boat lies there.’ We all got into it, but the men had to push it out into the water, for we could not endure the heat. Then the smoke grew so thick that we could not tell where we were going and there was not a thing in the boat to guide it by, but the wind carried us swiftly where it was so cold that we shook and shivered. Mrs. Huxtable kept a single blanket and the others were given to the men, who were in their night clothes. She gathered the little ones within the blanket and hugged them until they fell asleep. For nearly two days the waves were all about us and we had only water from the lake to drink, but at last we were picked up and taken into Port Huron.”
“But what about yourself? Tell us what you did after that,” urged Kate.
“I—why I—went back to Rock Falls. What else could I do?”
“And then?” urged Kate.