up with surprising quickness and hobbled across the floor without her
stick, the point of her mob-cap nodding to every part of the room, while
she moved the whole of herself first to one side and then to the other
as she walked, like one of the geese waddling across the common.

"Goo back and mind yerr book!" cried the old lady to the sharp-eyed
little boy, who was peeping round her skirts. But he did not go back.
Who could, when they saw those tongues of flame shooting up, and the
volumes of smoke darkening the summer sky, as the wooden shed and the
palings near it caught and smoked and crackled, and heard the cries of
men and boys shouting for water and more water, which old Jack Foster,
and idiot Tom, and some women, with baskets hastily deposited by the
roadside, and even boys not much bigger than himself, were toiling to
bring as fast as possible in pails from the brook, before the flames
should spread to the row of cottages so perilously near? No earthly
power could have kept the mite out of the fray. Before the old dame knew
where he was, his little hands were clenched round the handle of a heavy
iron pail, and he was struggling up the yard to where the men were
tearing down the connecting fences, in a desperate endeavour to stay the
onrush, of the flames. To and fro, to and fro, the child toiled,
begrimed by falling blacks, scorched by the blaze, his whole mind intent
on one thing--to stop the burning of that charred and tottering mass.

It was done at last, and the cottages were saved. The rescue party
dispersed, and the dirty, tired boy strayed slowly homeward down the
village street. He could see himself now arriving soot-covered, and
well-nigh speechless with fatigue, at his mother's door, could hear the
cries and exclamations that arose at the sight of him, could feel the
tender hands that removed the clothes from his hot little body, and
washed him, and put him to bed. It took him several days to recover from