required an explanation. When he had told the story, and declared his purpose, his mother sought gently to calm his spirit; but finding that impossible in his present mood, she quietly dropped the matter, hoping at some later time to dissuade Vic from his intention.

After supper Vic went out without saying where he was going. He walked up the street, and entered the office of Dr. McCutcheon, his father's life-long friend.

"Well, my boy," said the doctor, "what's the matter? Have you been hurt?"

"No; it's nothing," said Vic; "and I didn't come for sticking-plasters or poultices. I want your advice."

"You shall have it. What is the trouble?"

"I want you to tell me just how I should live, while developing my muscles, in order that I may gain strength and activity as rapidly as possible."

"What! going to make a prize-fighter of yourself? I thought you cared more for triumphs won with your head."

"No, I'm not going to be a prize-fighter," replied Vic; "but I am going to get up all the muscle there is in me, and I want to know about diet, etc."

"Well," said the doctor, "perhaps you are a trifle flabby for want of exercise, and I'm not sure that you can do better than train a little. As to diet, quit coffee and tea, eat plenty of roast beef and other wholesome plain food, let pastry alone, and don't study just before or just after a hearty meal; get ten hours' sleep in every twenty-four, if you can; and it won't take much training to make you robust."

Clearly the doctor had no thought that Vic intended anything more than to make himself robust and healthy; but Vic had secured the information he wanted.

The next day he fitted up a number of gymnastic appliances in the cow barn. He fastened ring ropes to the beams, and constructed some parallel bars; he swung a ladder horizontally, and hung a bag of sand on a level with his breast. Then his training began. When he got out of bed in the morning he took a cold bath, and rubbed himself well with a coarse towel. Then slipping on some light clothing, he went out and ran around two or three blocks at a good round pace. On his return, after taking breath, he swung by his hands on his ring ropes, drawing himself up first with both hands, and then, after a week's practice, with one hand at a time. The horizontal bars and the ladder came next, each furnishing a variety of exercises for different muscles. Finally, Vic would stand in front of his sand bag and strike it with his fists a great many times.

At first these muscular exercises made him stiff and sore, but this effect soon passed away, and day by day he increased the amount of exercise taken. His muscles grew in size and hardened. Feats that had been impossible to him at first, became easy, and the exercise which at first seemed to exhaust him became positively delightful. Devising new exercises and new apparatus every week, he presently found that he was acquiring something besides strength—he was growing expert in all manner of agile feats. He practiced trapeze performances, and rapidly acquired an accuracy of eye, a steadiness of nerves, which made easy and safe many cat-like feats, in which, if he had attempted them a few weeks before, he must certainly have broken his neck.

His mother had anxiously watched his conduct; and one evening she seized upon a favorable moment for remonstrance, seeking to dissuade him from his purpose of vengeance. He heard her silently, and when she had done, he replied, very calmly, but very resolutely:

"Mother, what you say is all true and right in principle. It is wrong to cherish anger and to seek vengeance, but that isn't my case. I don't hate Hen Little: I pity his meanness and his cowardice. I am not seeking vengeance, but justice, and I have a right to that. If I were to give up thrashing him, I should look at myself with contempt. I shall punish him, not because I hate him—for I don't—but because I must assert my own manhood."

The widow was perplexed by this view of the case. She could not quite believe it was right, and yet she could not conscientiously say it was wrong.

"Well, my son," she replied, "I fear you are wrong; but you may be right. At any rate, I can not take the responsibility of urging you to submit to anything that you feel to be a degradation. Feeling as you do, you must decide the matter for yourself."

"I have decided it," said Vic; "and the decision is that I must thrash Hen Little."

Vic and his mother were sitting in the doorway during this conversation. Vic had finished his lessons, and the hour was late, but the night was so pleasant that the pair sat there chatting long after their usual bed-time. Just as Vic ended the discussion with the remark quoted above, the fire-bells rang out with that eager, noisy, frightened clangor which fire-bells have only in small cities where a fire calls the whole population forth. Vic seized his hat and ran, guided by the glare which already appeared at the opposite end of the town.

The burning house was one of the largest in the little city, a building three stories in height; and before the excited volunteer fire companies could get a stream of water running, the fire was evidently beyond their control. It had broken out in the lower story, near the stairway; and finding that efforts to stay its course were idle, the firemen and spectators did little more than place ladders at a second-story window for the escape of the family, who had been sleeping. When all were out, there was nothing to do but to stand and watch the bonfire, as no other house was near enough to be in danger.

Presently a head appeared at one of the windows of the third story, and a cry for help was heard. A shudder ran through the crowd, for there was no help to be given. The fire had burned both the stairways, and there was no ladder long enough to reach beyond the second story. Some of the spectators stood stupefied; others ran about aimlessly, trying to do something, but having no idea what.

Meantime the boy at the window cried aloud and piteously for help. His father and mother were not less frantic than he. They had believed that all the family were safely out, supposing that Hen—for it was Hen Little—had passed down one flight from his third-story bedroom, and had escaped with the rest. Seeing him now at the window, they lost their wits, and cried to him to leap out, without thinking that to do so would be instant death to him. Yet there was apparently nothing to be done, and the situation was appalling. The crowd shuddered to think that the boy, whom they all knew, must be burned to death there in their sight.

Presently a cry arose at the rear of the crowd, and Vic Whitney came running with all his might, shouting:

"Don't jump, Hen! Stay where you are! Don't jump out!"

Vic had run to a neighboring house, and brought away a clothes-line.

"Has anybody a string?" he shouted—"a kite cord—anything—quick!"

A boy handed him a kite cord, and Vic quickly tied one end of it around his own body. Then turning to Tom Reid, he said:

"Unwind fifty feet or so, break it off, and tie the end to this rope, so that I can pull the rope up. Be quick."

Leaving Tom to execute this direction, Vic ran forward, stepped upon the railing of the front steps, and grasping a window-shutter which luckily was open, and therefore not in the blaze that licked its tongue out of the window, he drew himself lightly up to its top, crying out as he did so, "Play a stream of water on me."

The fireman obeyed, and none too soon, for all the clothing on Vic's right side was scorching. From the top of this shutter Vic reached the window-sill above, and disappeared in a dense cloud of black smoke. It was for only a moment, however. Having his wits about him, he held his breath to avoid suffocation, and quickly climbed to the top of the window, and into the air again. Another moment, and he had grasped the sill of the third-story window. A gust