The older people, with the single exception of the broad-shouldered Squire, had gone to bed at a healthy hour that evening, well assured that for once no patriotic racket would disturb their open-windowed slumbers. A quieter village there was not in the whole United States until just before the town clock prepared for the duty of telling them it was midnight.
The clock got ready. So did the Kerim boys. Squire Garnsey remarked, "I'll walk away a little, boys, so's I can see it burn."
Then a dozen matches were scratched at the same moment, and as many wisps of tarred paper were lighted and put in positions to do the most good.
How they did flash up, and how the fire did run! It was well there were no boys in that tree.
Bang! bang! bang!
"If they haven't managed to git out three anvils!" remarked the Squire. "Hear them guns. Crackers, too. Tin horns. They're workin' a hoss-fiddle on the back fence. There never was sech a racket in this 'ere town before. No, nor sech a blaze either. It beats a house a-fire."
So it did, but there was no insurance on the old elm.
When the good and quiet people around that square, on all sides except the one where the meeting-house and the academy stood, sprang out of bed and rushed to their windows, you could have read print, if it were large enough, anywhere about the middle of the green. And every head out of every window had something special to say about "those boys."
Up shot the flame over the pile of boxes and barrels, and the heap of broken boards and fence rails; up the well-tarred trunk, with a fierce fizzing and spluttering, and then it sprang along the boughs, and mounted and mounted, until every head at the windows was compelled to remark, also, "What on earth's got hold of that there tree?—it burns as if it was rosin."
Fourth of July had come, and all Kerim knew it; but before breakfast-time it was equally well known that the boys were going to have a "celebration," with all the regular honors.