extended from the opposite side of the store also to the horse-trough, where three men worked the great pump.

Back twenty yards, along the King’s Road, a white-faced row of women and children stood, ready to rush home and move their furniture into the fields.

Code, looking down, made out his mother and returned her friendly wave. Their house was across the road not a hundred feet away.

With a muffled roar another drum on the pier exploded. A great wave of molten fire shot out in the 17 breeze, and the shingles on Bill Boughton’s store, parched with the drought of a month, burst into quick flame.

The squire ran back to the water-trough.

“Dip!” he yelled. Big Pete Ellinwood, with the piles of buckets beside him, seized one and twitched it full.

“Pass!” screamed the squire as it came up dripping. Ellinwood’s great arm swung forward to meet the arm of the man a yard away. The bucket changed hands and went forward without losing a drop.

Up it went swiftly from one to another, to the eaves, to the two men at the top.

Now the fire sent branches out from the burning wharf along the low frames where some of the season’s miserable catch was drying in the open air after salting. The fish curled and blackened in the fierce heat.

Only two men were not in the bucket brigade. They were Nailor and Thomas, who stood watching the destruction of their whole property. They knew the squire had done well in saving the village rather than their own buildings. It was the tacit understanding in Freekirk Head that a few should lose rather than the many.

Code Schofield, from his perch on the Boughton roof-tree, looked down again to where he had last 18 seen his mother. Once more he distinguished the tall figure with its white face looking anxiously up at him, and he waved his hand reassuringly. Then his eye was caught by two other figures that lurked in the first shadows farther up the King’s Road. A moment later he made sure of their identity.

They were Nellie Tanner and Nat Burns.

For years there had been a dislike between the Burnses and the Schofields. Old Jasper Schofield, Code’s father, and Michael Burns had become enemies over the same girl a quarter of a century before, and the breach had never been healed. Old Captain Jasper had won, but he had never forgotten, and Michael had never forgiven.

Quite unconsciously the feud had been passed on to the children of both (for Michael had married within a few years), and from school-days Code and Nat had been the leaders of rival gangs.

When they became young men they matched their season’s catches and raced their father’s schooners. They were the two natural leaders of the Freekirk Head young bloods, but they were never on the same side of an argument.

Schofield wondered why Nat Burns was not at the fire, as usual attempting to make himself leader of the battle without doing much of the work, and now the reason was apparent. He preferred to pursue his courting under the eyes of the village rather than 19 to obey the unwritten law of service. And he was with Nellie Tanner!

Unlike most youths, there had never been a time in Code’s life when he had passed the favor of his affections around. Since the time they were both five Nellie Tanner had supplied in full all the feminine requirements he had ever desired. And she did at this moment. But Nat Burns had seen a great deal of her in the last three months, he remembered, taking advantage of Code’s desperate search for fish.

Once in this train his thoughts bore him on and on. Memories, speculations, and desires crowded his mind, and he forgot that beneath him the roof of Boughton’s store was burning more and more briskly.

Suddenly the man beside him on the ridge-pole shook his arm.

“Say, Code!” he cried. “What’s that burnin’ over there? I didn’t know the fire had gone across the street.”

Schofield looked up quickly and followed the direction of the other’s arm that pointed through the trees to the opposite side of King’s Road and a little to westward.

“Good Lord!” he cried excitedly; “it’s my own place, and my mother is all alone down there. Quick! Send somebody up here! I’m going!”

The man behind him climbed to the ridge-pole and Code began the descent, necessarily slow and careful because the ladders were loaded with men passing buckets. When he reached the ground he started for home on the run.

Opposite Boughton’s general store was another shop that made a specialty of fishermen’s “oilers,” boots, and overalls. Two houses to the westward of that was the old Schofield place, a low, white house surrounded by a rickety fence and covered with ivy.

Once he reached the middle of the road Code saw that he had been mistaken in the location of the fire, for his mother’s place was intact. The flame was coming, however, from the house next but one––Bijonah Tanner’s place.

A crowd was gathering in the yard that was overgrown with dusty wire-grass, and the squire was pushing his way through to take charge. Code knew that only two days before Captain Bijonah and his wife had sailed in the Rosan to St. John’s for lumber, 21 leaving Nellie alone in charge of the three small Tanners. He wondered where they all were now.

He found his mother on the edge of the crowd that was helping to save the furniture, and learned that Nellie and young Burns had already arrived and were doing what they could.

From the first it was apparent that the place was doomed, for although there were plenty of men eager to form a bucket brigade, the supply of water was limited, and most of the buckets were at the larger fire.

But the squire was working wonders, and enlisted Code to help him.

In fifteen minutes the whole roof and attic were ablaze, and the men turned their attention to wetting down the near walls of the houses on each side. All the valuables and most of the simple furniture had been saved.

At the earliest moment Schofield escaped from the squire and sought out Nellie. He found her, hysterical, surrounded by a group of women, and hovered over by Nat Burns. With each hand she held a child close to her.

“Bige! Where is little Bige?” she was crying as Code came up. “Tom and Mary are here, but I’ve lost Bige. Oh, Nat! Where is Bige?”

“Bless me if I know,” stammered Burns weakly. “Last I saw of him he was under that cherry-tree 22 where you told him to stay until you got the others. It wa’n’t more’n five minutes ago I seen him there. He must be around somewheres. I’ll look.”

Without another word he hurried off in a frantic search, looking to left and right, behind every bush, and among the crowd, bellowing the boy’s name at the top of his voice.

Code walked up to the frantic girl and went straight to the point.

“Hello, Nellie!” he said. “Where do you cal’late little Bige might be? I hear you’ve lost him.”

“Yes, I have, Code. I stood him under that cherry-tree and told him not to move. When I got back he was gone. He was seven, and just old enough to run around by himself and investigate things. Oh, I’m so afraid he’s gone––”

“Listen!” Code’s sharp, masterful tone put a sudden end to her sobbing. “Was there anything in the house he valued much?” Suddenly she drew in her breath sharply.

“Yes, yes,” she cried, “his mechanical train. He asked me if I had got it and I said I had. He must have gone over to the furniture