after a while. It is well we happened to be right here."

The young farmer was gazing at the burned place, with his jaw dropped
and a look of terror coming into his blue eyes.

"It did strike! I should say it did!" he cried excitedly. "What will
Nancy say?"

[Illustration: "I should say it did strike!" he cried, excitedly.]

Then as a realization came to him that it was owing to the boys that
they had a roof over their heads, he turned first to one lad and then to
the other, and shook their hands heartily. There were tears in his
eyes, but he did not seem conscious of them. "I don't know what Nancy
'll say," he reiterated, as he shook one hand after the other up and
down like a pump handle. "We'll have to be everlastingly obliged to you
for the rest of our days," he said, trying to laugh a little. But his
voice choked, and he turned away to hide his emotion. Then he dropped
down upon a corn-cutter and insisted on hearing the story from beginning
to end, although Old Tilly declared time and again, with the other two
joining in, that "It was nothing."

"You call it nothing? Well, you wait until you've worked half a
lifetime, as Nancy and me have done, to get a place, and then see what
you think about it. I guess Nancy 'll believe it's something."

Then he stopped as a clear call, "Breakfast! Breakfast!" came ringing
out to them from the open door beyond the pump. "Perhaps we'd better not
say anything about it until after breakfast. She's had a powerful
uneasy night, and it's been a good bit of a ride over, too."