This awoke Ben Gadsby's ambition. "I believe I'll go in there and see where the fire is."
"Fire!" exclaimed old Mr. Gadsby, with some irritation. "Who said anything about fire? What living and moving creature could build a fire in that thicket? I'd like mighty well to lay my eyes on him."
"Well," said Ben Gadsby, "where you see smoke there's obliged to be fire. I've heard you say that yourself."
"Me?" exclaimed Mr. Jonathan Gadsby, with a show of alarm in the midst of his indignation. "Did I say that? Well, it was when I wasn't so much as thinking that my two eyes were my own. What about foxfire? Suppose that some quagmire or other in that there swamp has gone and got up a ruction on its own hook? Smoke without fire? Why, I've seed it many a time. And maybe that smoke comes from an eruption in the ground. What then? Who's going to know where the fire is?"
Little Crotchet laughed, but Ben Gadsby put on a very bold front. "Well," said he, "I can find bee-trees, and I'll find where that fire is."
"Well, sir," remarked Mr. Jonathan Gadsby, looking at his son with an air of pride, "find out where the smoke comes from, and we'll not expect you to see the fire."
"I wish I could go with you," said Little Crotchet.
"I don't need any company," replied Ben Gadsby. "I've done made up my mind, and I'm a-going to show the folks around here that where there's so much smoke there's obliged to be some fire."
The young man, knowing that he had some warm work before him, pulled off his coat, and tied the sleeves over his shoulder, sash fashion. Then he waved his hand to his father and to Little Crotchet, and went rapidly down the hill. He had undertaken the adventure in a spirit of bravado. He knew that a number of the neighbors had tried to solve the mystery of the smoke in the swamp and had failed. He thought, too, that he would fail; and yet he was urged on by the belief that if he should happen to succeed, all the boys and all the girls in the neighborhood would regard him as a wonderful young man. He had the same ambition that animated the knights of old, but on a smaller scale.