here is a regular pumping engine, and some lines of hose. If we'd had
'em to-night we might have saved the barn."

"The Selectmen of Lakeville are too stingy to appropriate any money
for a fire department," said Bert. "I remember once, years ago, when
my father was alive, he proposed it, but nothing ever came of it."

"This is a miserly town, anyhow," added Cole. "They never have any
Fourth of July celebration."

"That's right," agreed his chums.

Little was talked of in the village the next day but the fire at the
barn. Bert and Vincent were praised on all sides, and when Bert
appeared in the streets, with one hand bandaged up, where it had been
slightly burned, he was congratulated by nearly every one who met him,
until he blushed like a girl.

"If Constable Stickler had given the alarm a little earlier, so's the
bucket brigade could have got there quicker, we could have saved the
barn," said Moses Sagger, the owner of the only butcher shop in town.
He was a member of the brigade.

"That bucket brigade could never have put out that fire, Moses," said
Peter Appelby. "There wasn't water enough."

"Yes, there was. Didn't we put out the fire at Sim Rockford's, one
day, about two years ago?"

"Yes, but that was only his henhouse, when his wife put a charcoal