Jack turned upon reaching the house, and as he looked back he uttered a loud exclamation, and out from the house rushed all the people who were gathered there.
"Jingo!" Jack shouted. "The old hotel"s gone, sure, this time!"
The burrowing spark had smoldered slowly along, until it felt the first fanning of the rising gale. In another minute it flared as if under a blowpipe, and soon a fierce sheet of flame came bursting through the roof.
Down poured the rain; but the hottest of that blaze was roofed over, and the fire had its own way with the empty addition.
"We couldn"t help if we should try," exclaimed Mr. Ogden.
"I"ll put on my old clothes, any way," said Jack. "n.o.body knows what"s coming."
"I will, too," said his father.
Jack paused a moment, and said, from the foot of the stairs:
"The steeple"s down,--right through the meeting-house. It has smashed the whole church!"
The sight of the fire had made him withhold that news for a minute; but now, for another minute, the fire was almost forgotten.
Elder Holloway began to say something in praise of Mary Ogden about her leading out the cla.s.s, but she darted away.
"Let me get by, Jack," she said. "Let me pa.s.s, please. They all would have been killed if they had waited! But I was thinking only of my cla.s.s and the rain."
She ran up-stairs and Jack followed. Then the elder made a number of improving remarks about discipline and presence of mind, and the natural fitness of some people for doing the right thing in an emergency. He might have said more, but all were drawn to the windows to watch the strife between the fire and the rain.
The fierce wind drove the smoke through the building, compelling the landlord and his wife to escape as best they could, and, for the time being, the victory seemed to be with the fire.
"Seems to me," said the blacksmith, somberly, "as if Crofield was going to pieces. This is the worst storm we ever had. The meeting-house is gone, and the hotel"s going!"
Mary, at her window, was looking out in silence, but her face was bright rather than gloomy. Even if she was "only a girl," she had found an opportunity for once, and she had not proved unequal to it.
CHAPTER V.
JACK OGDEN"S RIDE.
Jack needed only a few minutes to put on the suit he had worn when fishing.
"There, now," he said; "if there"s going to be a big flood in the creek I"m going down to see it, rain or no rain. There"s no telling how high it"ll rise if this pour keeps on long enough. It rattles on the roof like buckshot!"
"That"s the end of the old tavern," said Jack to Mary, as he stood in the front room looking out.
He was barefooted, and had come so silently that she was startled.
"Jack!" she exclaimed, turning around, "they might have all been killed when the steeple came down. I heard what Joe Hawkins said, and I led out the cla.s.s."
"Good for Joe!" said Jack. "We need a new meeting-house, any way. I heard the elder say so. Less steeple, next time, and more church!"
"I"d like to see a real big church," said Mary,--"a city church."
"You"d like to go to the city as much as I would," said Jack.
"Yes, I would," she replied emphatically. "Just you get there and I"ll come afterward, if I can. I"ve been studying twice as hard since I left the academy, but I don"t know why."
"I know it," said Jack; "but I"ve had no time for books."
"Jack! Molly!" the voice of Aunt Melinda came up the stairway. "Are you ever coming down-stairs?"
"What will the elder say to my coming down barefoot?" said Jack; "but I don"t want shoes if I"m going out into the mud."
"He won"t care at such a time as this," said Mary. "Let"s go."
It was not yet supper-time, but it was almost dark enough to light the lamps. Jack felt better satisfied about his appearance when he found how dark and shadowy the parlor was; and he felt still better when he saw his father dressed as if he were going over to work at the forge, all but the leather ap.r.o.n.
The elder did not seem disturbed. He and Mr. Murdoch were talking about all sorts of great disasters, and Mary did not know just when she was drawn into the talk, or how she came to acknowledge having read about so many different things all over the world.
"Jack," whispered his mother, at last, "you"ll have to go to the barn and gather eggs, or we sha"n"t have enough for supper."
"I"ll bring the eggs if I don"t get drowned before I get back," said Jack; and he found a basket and an umbrella and set out.
He took advantage of a little lull in the rain, and ran to the barn-yard gate.
"Hullo!" he exclaimed. "Now I"ll have to wade. Why it"s nearly a foot deep! There"ll be the biggest kind of a freshet in the Cocahutchie.
Isn"t this jolly?"
The rain pattered on the roof as if it had been the head of a drum. If the house was gloomy, the old barn was darker and gloomier. Jack turned over a half-bushel measure and sat down on it.
"I want to think," he said. "I want to get out of this. Seems to me I never felt it so before. I"d as lief live in this barn as stay in Crofield."
He suddenly sprang up and shook off his blues, exclaiming: "I"ll go and see the freshet, anyhow!"
He carried the eggs into the house.
All the time he had been gone, Elder Holloway had been asking Mary very particularly about the Crofield Academy.
"I don"t wonder she says what she does about the trustees," remarked Aunt Melinda. "She took the primary room twice, for "most a month each time, when the teacher was sick, and all the thanks she had was that they didn"t like it when they found it out."
The gutter in front of the house had now become a small torrent.
"All the other gutters are just like that," said Jack. "So are the brooks all over the country, and it all runs into the Cocahutchie!"
"Father," said Jack, after supper, "I"m going down to the creek."
"I wish you would," said his father. "Come back and tell us how it"s looking."
"Could a freshet here do any damage?" asked Mr. Murdoch.