CHAPTER IV.

A FIRE AND A PLAN.

Some people said that old Johann Heinrich never slept, for no matter
what hour of the night one passed his lonely little house, a lamp was
always burning. He was a queer old German naturalist, living by himself
in a cottage adjoining the MacIntyre place. He had been a professor in a
large university until he grew too old to keep his position. Why he
should have chosen Lloydsborough Valley as the place to settle for the
remainder of his life, no one could tell.

He kept kimself away from his neighbours, and spent so much time roaming
around the woods by himself that people called him queer. They did not
know that he had written two big books about the birds and insects he
loved so well, or that he could tell them facts more wonderful than
fairy tales about these little wild creatures of the woodland.

To-night he had read later than usual, and his fire was nearly out. He
was too poor to keep a servant, so when he found that the coal-hod was
empty he had to go out to the kitchen to fill it himself. That is why he
saw something that happened soon after midnight, while everybody else in
the valley was sound asleep.

Over in the cabin by the spring-house where the boys had left the tramp
and Jonesy, a puff of smoke went curling around the roof. Then a tongue
of flame shot up through the cedars, and another and another until the
sky was red with an angry glare. It lighted up the eastern window-panes
of the servants' cottage, but the inmates, tired from the unusual
serving of the evening before, slept on. It shone full across the window