had poured into the barrel was not enough to quench the flames, for in
the excitement of the moment she had spilled more than half of it on her
way down. What was to be done? The house would catch and probably be
burned to the ground, and they would be rendered homeless.

"Oh! if Dan were at home, he could put it out," Olive managed to
articulate, for both she and Esther were nearly suffocated with the
dense black smoke with which the cellar was filled, and now the barrel
itself had caught. The cellar was very small, and everything in it would
soon be blazing unless the fire could be extinguished at once.

"Oh! what shall we do," cried Esther, "what shall we do?"

"Run out in the street and cry fire as loud as you can. Come, let's run
at once or the whole house will burn down," exclaimed Olive, by this
time wild with fear.

So, both she and Esther ran up stairs and out into the street, crying
"fire! fire!" Of course their cries aroused the whole neighborhood. At
the moment a gentleman, a stranger in the village, who happened to be
passing, instantly threw off his coat, rushed into the cottage, picked
up a mat from the dining room floor, and was down in the cellar in a
second. He put the fire entirely out, and then, without waiting to be
thanked, walked out of the cottage and was soon lost to view in the
distance; and, what is remarkably strange, nobody knows who he was or
whence he came, for from that day he has not been seen.

The news of the fire which the ghost had set in Dan's cellar soon
travelled all over the country and created a great deal of curiosity.
People who had set the whole affair down as a fraud began to think that