"You're the boy for me," said Ham. "I guess I know what you're up to."

The ladder was one the house-painters had been using, and was a pretty heavy one; but it was quickly set up against the largest and most valuable of the barns, and the one, too, which was nearest and most exposed to the burning building and its flying cinders. The rope was on hand, and the broom, by the time the ladder was in position.

"Ford," said Dab, "you and Frank help the girls bring water, till the men from the village get here. There's plenty of pails, but every one of our hands is away.--Now, Ham, I'm ready."

Up they went, and were quickly astride of the ridge of the roof. It would have been perilous work for any man to have ventured farther una.s.sisted; but Dab tied one end of the rope firmly around his waist, Ham tied himself to the other, and then Dab could slip down the steep roof, in any direction, without danger of slipping off to the ground below.

But the broom?

It was as useful as a small fire-engine. The flying cinders of burning hay or wood, as they alighted upon the sun-dried shingles of the roof, needed to be swept off as fast as they fell, before they had time to fulfil their errand of mischief. Here and there they had been at work for some minutes, and the fresh little blazes they had kindled had so good a start, that the broom alone would have been insufficient; and there the rapidly-arriving pails of water came into capital play.

Ford Foster had never shone out to so good an advantage in all his life before, as he did when he took his station on the upper rounds of that ladder, and risked his neck to hand water-pails to Ham. It was hard work, all around, but hardest of all for the two "firemen" on the roof.

Now and then the strength and agility of Ham Morris were put to pretty severe tests, as Dab danced around under the scorching heat, or slipped flat upon the sloping roof. It was well for Ham that he was a man of weight and substance.

There were scores and scores of people streaming up from the village now, arriving in panting squads, every moment; and Mrs. Kinzer had all she could do to keep them from "rescuing" every atom of her furniture out of the house, and piling it up in the road.

"Wait, please," she said to them very calmly.

"If Ham and Dab save the long barn, the fire won't spread any farther.

The old barn won't be any loss to speak of, anyhow."

Fiercely as the dry old barn burned, it used itself up all the quicker on that account; and it was less than thirty minutes from the time Ham and Dabney got at work before roof and rafters fell in, and the worst of the danger was over. The men and boys from the village were eager enough to do any thing that now remained to be done; but a large share of this was confined to standing around and watching the "bonfire" burn down to a harmless heap of badly smelling ashes. As soon, however, as they were no more wanted on the roof, the two "volunteer firemen" came down; and Ham Morris's first word on reaching the ground was,--

"Dab, my boy, how you've grown!"

Not a tenth of an inch in mere stature, and yet Ham was entirely correct about it.

He stared at Dabney for a moment; and then he turned, and stared at every thing else. There was plenty of light just then, moon or no moon; and Ham's eyes were very busy for a full minute. He noted rapidly the improvements in the fences, sheds, barns, the blinds on the house, the paint, a host of small things that had changed for the better; and then he simply said, "Come on, Dab," and led the way into the house. Her mother and sisters had already given Miranda a hurried look at what they had done, but Ham was not the man to do any thing in haste. Deliberately and silently he walked from room to room, and from cellar to garret, hardly seeming to hear the frequent comments of his enthusiastic young wife. That he did hear all that had been said around him as he went, however, was at last made manifest, for he said,--

"Dab, I've seen all the other rooms. Where's yours?"

"I'm going to let you and Miranda have my room," said Dab. "I don't think I shall board here long."

"I don't think you will either," said Ham emphatically. "You're going away to boarding-school. Miranda, is there any reason why Dab can't have the south-west room, up stairs, with the bay-window?"

That room had been Samantha's choice, and she looked at Dab reproachfully; but Miranda replied,--

"No, indeed. Not if you wish him to have it."

"Now, Ham," said Dabney, "I'm not big enough to fit that room. Give me one nearer my size. That's a little loose for even Sam, and she can't take any tucks in it."

Samantha's look changed to one of grat.i.tude, and she did not notice the detested nickname.

"Well, then," said Ham, "we'll see about it. You can sleep in the spare chamber to-night.--Mother Kinzer, I couldn't say enough about this house business if I talked all night. It must have cost you a deal of money. I couldn't have dared to ask it. I guess you must kiss me again."

A curious thing it was that came next,--one that n.o.body could have reckoned on. Mrs. Kinzer--good soul--had set her heart on having Ham and Miranda's house "ready for them" on their return; and now Ham seemed to be so pleased about it, she actually began to cry. She said, too,--

"I'm so sorry about the barn!"

Ham only laughed, in his quiet way, as he kissed his portly mother-in-law, and said,--

"Come, come, mother Kinzer, you didn't set it afire. Can't Miranda and I have some supper? Dab must be hungry, too, after all that roof-sweeping."

There had been a sharp strain on the nerves of all of them that day and evening; and they were glad enough to gather around the tea-table, while all that was now left of the old barn smouldered peaceably away with half the boys in the village on guard.

Once or twice Ham or Dab went out to see that all was dying out rightly; but it was plain that all the danger was over, unless a high wind should come to scatter the cinders.

By this time the whole village had heard of Dab's adventure with the tramp, and had at once connected the latter with the fire. There were those, indeed, who expressed a savage wish to connect him with it bodily; and it was well for him that he had done his running away promptly, and had hidden himself with care, for men were out after him in all directions, on foot and on horseback. Who would have dreamed of so dirty a vagabond "taking to the water"?

"He's a splendid fellow, anyway!"

Odd, was it not? but Annie Foster and Jenny Walters were half a mile apart when they both said that very thing, just before the clock in the village church hammered out the news that it was ten, and bedtime. They were not either of them speaking of the tramp.

It was long after that, however, before the lights were out in all the rooms of the Morris mansion.

CHAPTER XVII.

DAB HAS A WAKING DREAM, AND HAM GETS A SNIFF OF SEA-AIR.

Sleep? One of the most excellent things in all the world, and very few people get too much of it nowadays.

As for Dabney Kinzer, he had done his sleeping as regularly and faithfully as even his eating, up to the very night after Ham Morris came home to find the old barn afire. There had been a few, a very few, exceptions. There were the nights when he was expecting to go duck-shooting before daylight, and waked up at midnight with a strong conviction that he was late about starting. There were, perhaps, a dozen of "eeling" expeditions, that had kept him out late enough for a full basket and a proper scolding. There, too, was the night when he had stood so steadily by the tiller of "The Swallow," while she danced, through the dark, across the rough billows of the Atlantic.

But, on the whole, Dab Kinzer had been a good sleeper all his life till then. Once in bed, and there had been for him an end of all wakefulness.

On that particular night, for the first time, sleep refused to come, late as was the hour when the family circle broke up.

It could not have been the excitement of Ham and Miranda's return. He would have gotten over that by this time. No more could it have been the fire, though the smell of smouldering hay came in pretty strongly at times through the wide-open windows. If any one patch of that great roomy bed was better made up for sleeping than the rest of it, Dab would surely have found the spot; for he tumbled and rolled all over it in his restlessness. Some fields on a farm will "grow" wheat better than others, but no part of the bed seemed to grow any sleep. At last Dab got wearily up, and took a chair by the window.

The night was dark, but the stars were shining; and every now and then the wind would make a shovel of itself, and toss up the hot ashes the fire had left, sending a dull red glare around on the house and barns for a moment, and flooding all the neighborhood with a stronger smell of burnt hay.

"If you're going to burn hay," soliloquized Dabney, "it won't do to take a barn for a stove. Not that kind of a barn. But what did Ham Morris mean by saying that I was to go to boarding-school? That's what I'd like to know"

The secret was out.

He had kept remarkably still, for him, all the evening, and had not asked a question; but, if his brains were ever to work over his books as they had over Ham's remark, his future chances for sound sleep were all gone. It had come upon him so suddenly, the very thing he thought about that night in "The Swallow," and wished for and dreamed about during all those walks and talks and lessons of all sorts with Ford Foster and Frank Harley, ever since they came in from that memorable cruise.

It was a wonderful idea, and Dab had his doubts as to the way his mother would take to it when it should be brought seriously before her. Little he guessed the truth. Ham's remark had gone deep into other ears as well as Dabney's; and there were reasons, therefore, why good Mrs. Kinzer was sitting by the window of her own room, at that very moment, as little inclined to sleep as was the boy she was thinking of. So proud of him too, she was, and so full of bright, motherly thoughts of the man he would make, "one of these days, when he gets his growth."

There must have been a good deal of sympathy between Dab and his mother; for by and by, just as she began to feel drowsy, and muttered, "Well, well, we'll have a talk about it to-morrow," Dab found himself nodding against the window-frame, and slowly rose from his chair, remarking,--

"Guess I might as well finish that dream in bed. If I'd tumbled out o'

the window I'd have lit among Miranda's rose-bushes. They've got their thorns all out at this time o' night."