that night, I cannot say. I do not know even where he got the huge
red helmet that he wore, nor had I ever heard till the night the
church burnt down that Mr. Smith was a member of the fire brigade at
all. But it's always that way. Your little narrow-chested men may
plan and organize, but when there is something to be done, something
real, then it's the man of size and weight that steps to the front
every time. Look at Bismarck and Mr. Gladstone and President Taft and
Mr. Smith,--the same thing in each case.

I suppose it was perfectly natural that just as soon as Mr. Smith
came on the scene he put on somebody's helmet and shouted his
directions to the men and bossed the Mariposa fire brigade like
Bismarck with the German parliament.

The fire had broken out late, late at night, and they fought it till
the day. The flame of it lit up the town and the bare grey maple
trees, and you could see in the light of it the broad sheet of the
frozen lake, snow covered still. It kindled such a beacon as it
burned that from the other side of the lake the people on the night
express from the north could see it twenty miles away. It lit up
such a testimony of flame that Mariposa has never seen the like of it
before or since. Then when the roof crashed in and the tall steeple
tottered and fell, so swift a darkness seemed to come that the grey
trees and the frozen lake vanished in a moment as if blotted out of
existence.


When the morning came the great church of Mariposa was nothing but a
ragged group of walls with a sodden heap of bricks and blackened
wood, still hissing here and there beneath the hose with the sullen