"Well, this engine'll do anything you ask it," rejoined Osterhaut. "When
did you have a fire last, Billy?" he shouted to the driver of the
engine, as the horses' feet caught the dusty road of Manitou.

"Six months," was the reply, "but she's working smooth as music. She's
as good as anything 'twixt here and the Atlantic."

"It ain't time for Winter fires. I wonder what set it going," said
Jowett, shaking his head ominously. "Something wrong with the furnace,
I s'pose," returned Osterhaut. "Probably trying the first heatup of the
Fall."

Osterhaut was right. No one had set the church on fire. The sexton had
lighted the furnace for the first time to test it for the Winter's
working, but had not stayed to see the result. There was a defect in the
furnace, the place had caught fire, and some of the wooden flooring had
been burnt before the aged Monseigneur Lourde discovered it. It was he
who had given the alarm and had rescued the silver altar-vessels from the
sacristy.

Manitou offered brute force, physical energy, native athletics, muscle
and brawn; but it was of no avail. Five hundred men, with five hundred
buckets of water would have had no effect upon the fire at St. Michael's
Church at Manitou; willing hands and loving Christian hearts would have
been helpless to save the building without the scientific aid of the
Lebanon fire-brigade. Ingolby, on founding the brigade, had equipped it
to the point where it could deal with any ordinary fire. The work it had
to do at St. Michael's was critical. If the church could not be saved,
then the wooden houses by which it was surrounded would be swept away,