Jack was dry enough, but anybody could see that he had had a ducking, when he marched down the main street. He was carrying his prizes in two strings, one in each hand, and he was looking and feeling taller than he ever felt before. It was just the right hour to meet people, and he had to answer curious questions from some women, and from twice as many men, and from three times as many boys, all the way from above the green, where he came out into the street, down to the front of the Washington Hotel.

"Yes; I caught 'em all in the Cocahutchie."

He had had to say that any number of times, and he had also explained, apparently without trying to conceal anything:

"I had to swim for 'em. Caught 'em all under water. Those big speckled fellows are trout. They pulled me clean under. All that kind of fish live under water." And he told half a dozen inquiring boys: "I've found the best fish-hole you ever saw. Deep water all 'round it. I'm going there again." And then every one asked: "Take me with you, Jack?"

He had to come to a halt at the tavern, for every man in the arm-chairs on the piazza brought his feet down from the railing.

"Hold on! I want to look at those fish!" shouted old Livermore, the landlord. "Where'd you catch 'em?"

"Down the Cocahutchie," said Jack once more. "I caught 'em under water."

"Those are just what I'm looking for," replied Livermore, rubbing his sides, while nearly a dozen men crowded around to admire, and to guess at the weights.

"Traout's a-sellin' at a dollar a paound, over to Mertonville," squealed old Deacon Hawkins; "and traout o' that size is wuth more'n small traout. Don't ye let old Livermore cheat ye, Jack."

"I won't cheat him, Deacon," said the big landlord. "I don't want any thing but the trout. There's a Sunday crowd coming over from Mertonville, to-morrer, to hear Elder Holloway. I'll give ye two dollars, Jack."

"That's enough for one fish," said Jack. "Don't you want the big one? I had to dive for him. He'll weigh more'n three pounds."

"No, he won't!" said the landlord, becoming more and more eager. "Say three dollars for the lot."

"I daon't know but what I want some o' them traout myself," began Deacon Hawkins, peering more closely at the largest prize. "It's hard times,—and a dollar a paound. I've got some folks comin' and Elder Holloway's to be at my haouse. I don't know but I oughter—"

"I'll take 'em, Jack," interrupted the landlord, testily. "I spoke first. Three pounds, and two is five pounds, and—"

"I'll give another dollar for the small traout," exclaimed Deacon Hawkins. "He can't have 'em all."

The landlord might have hesitated even then, but the excitement was catching, and Squire Jones was actually, but slowly, taking out his pocket-book.

"Five! There's your five, Jack. The big fish are mine. Take your money. Fetch 'em in," broke out old Livermore.

"There's my dollar,—and there's my traout,—" squealed the deacon.

"I was just a-goin' to saay—" at that moment growled the deep, heavy bass voice of Squire Jones.

"Too late," said the landlord. "He's taken my money. Come in, Jack. Come in and get yours, Deacon," and Jack walked on into the Washington House with six dollars in his hand, just as a boy he knew stuck his head under Squire Jones's arm and shouted:

"Jack!—Jack! Why didn't yer put 'em up at auction?"

It took but a minute to get rid of the very fine fish he had sold, and then the uncommonly successful angler made his way out of the Washington Hotel through the side door.

"I don't intend to answer any more questions," he said to himself; "and all that crowd is out there yet."

There was another reason that he did not give, for his perch, good as they were, and the wide-mouthed sucker, and the great, clumsy bullheads, looked mean and common, now that their elegant companions were gone. He felt almost ashamed of them until just as he reached the back yard of his own home.

A tall, grimy man, with his head under the pump, was vigorously scrubbing charcoal and iron dust from his face and hands and hair. "Jack," he shouted, "where'd you get that string o' fish? Best I've seen round here for ever so long."

Another voice came from the kitchen door, and in half a second it seemed to belong to a chorus of voices.

"Why, Jack Ogden! What a string of fish!"

"I caught 'em 'way down the Cocahutchie, Mother," said Jack. "I caught 'em all under water. Had to go right in after some of 'em."

"I should say you did," growled his father, almost jocosely, and then he and Mrs. Ogden and Aunt Melinda and the children crowded around to examine the fish, on the pump platform.

"Jack must do something better'n that," said his father, rubbing his face hard with the kitchen towel; "but he's had the best kind o' luck this time."

"He caught a team of runaway horses this morning, too," said Mary, looking proudly at the fish. "I wish I could do something worth talking about, but I'm only a girl."

Jack's clothes had not suffered much from their ducking, mainly because the checked shirt and linen trousers, of which his suit consisted, had been frequently soaked before. His straw hat was dry, for it had been lying on the grass when he went into the water, and so were his shoes and stockings, which had been under the bed in his bedroom, waiting for Sunday.

It was not until the family was gathered at the table that Jack came out with the whole tremendous story of his afternoon's sport, and of its cash results.

"Now I've learned all about fly-fishing," he said, with confidence, "I can catch fish anywhere. I sha'n't have to go to fish out of that old mill-pond again."

"Six dollars!" exclaimed his mother, from behind the tea-pot. "What awful extravagance there is in this wicked world! But what'll you do with six dollars?"

"It's high time he began to earn something," said the tall blacksmith, gloomily. "It's hard times in Crofield. There's almost nothing for him to do here."

"That's why I'm going somewhere else," said Jack, with a sudden burst of energy, and showing a very red face. "Now I've got some money to pay my way, I'm going to New York."

"No, you're not," said his father, and then there was a silence for a moment.

"What on earth could you do in New York?" said his mother, staring at him as if he had said something dreadful. She was not a small woman, but she had an air of trying to be larger, and her face quickly began to recover its ordinary smile of self-confident hope, so much like that of Jack. She added, before anybody else could speak: "There are thousands and thousands of folks there already. Well—I suppose you could get along there, if they can."

"It's too full," said her husband. "It's fuller'n Crofield. He couldn't do anything in a city. Besides, it isn't any use; he couldn't get there, or anywhere near there, on six dollars."

"If he only could go somewhere, and do something, and be somebody," said Mary, staring hard at her plate.

She had echoed Jack's thought, perfectly. "That's you, Molly," he said, "and I'm going to do it, too."

"You're going to work a-haying, all next week, I guess," said his father, "if there's anybody wants ye. All the money you earn you can give to your mother. You ain't going a-fishing again, right away. Nobody ever caught the same fish twice."

Slowly, glumly, but promptly, Jack handed over his two greenbacks to his mother, but he only remarked:

"If I work for anybody 'round here, they'll want me to take my pay in hay. They won't pay cash."

"Hay's just as good," said his father; and then he changed the subject and told his wife how the miller had again urged him to trade for the strip of land along the creek, above and below the bridge. "It comes right up to the line of my lot," he said, "and to Hawkins's fence. The whole of it isn't worth as much as mine is, but I don't see what he wants to trade for."

She agreed with him, and so did Aunt Melinda; but Jack and Mary finished their suppers and went out to the front door. She stood still for a moment, with her hands clasped behind her, looking across the street, as if she were reading the sign on the shop. The discontented, despondent expression on her face made her more and more like a very young and pretty copy of her father.

"I don't care, Molly," said Jack. "If they take away every cent I get, I'm going to the city, some time."

"I'd go, too, if I were a boy," she said. "I've got to stay at home and wash dishes and sweep. You can go right out and make your fortune. I've read of lots of boys that went away from home and worked their way up. Some of 'em got to be Presidents."

"Some girls amount to something, too," said Jack. "You've been through the Academy. I had to stop, when I was twelve, and go to work in a store. Been in every store in Crofield. They didn't pay me a cent in cash, but I learned the grocery business, and the dry-goods business, and all about crockery. That was something. I could keep a store. Some of the stores in New York 'd hold all the stores in Crofield."

"Some of 'em are owned and run by women, too," said Mary; "but there's no use of my thinking of any such thing."

Before he could tell her what he thought about it, her mother called her in, and then he, too, stood still and seemed to study the sign over the door of the blacksmith-shop.

"I'll do it!" he exclaimed at last, shaking his fist at the sign. "It isn't the end of July yet, and I'm going to get to the city before Christmas; you see 'f I don't."

After Mary Ogden left him and went in, Jack walked down to the bridge. It seemed as if the Cocahutchie had a special attraction for him, now that he knew what might be in it.

There were three boys leaning over the rail on the lower side of the bridge, and four on the upper side, and all were fishing. Jack did not know, and they did not tell him, that all their hooks were baited with "flies" of one kind or another instead of worms. Two had grasshoppers, and one had a big bumblebee, and they were after such trout as Jack Ogden had caught and been paid so much money for. One told another that Jack had five dollars apiece for those fish, and that even the bullheads were so heavy it tired him to carry them home.

Jack did not go upon the bridge. He strolled down along the water's edge.
Along the Water's Edge.
Along the Water's Edge.

"It's all sand and gravel," he said; "but I'd hate to leave it."

It was curious, but not until that very moment had he been at all aware of any real affection for Crofield. He was only dimly aware of it then, and he forgot it all to answer a hail from two men under the clump of giant trees which had so nearly wrecked the miller's wagon.

The men had been looking up at the trees, and Jack heard part of what they said about them, as he came near. They had called him to talk about his trout-fishing, but they had aroused his curiosity upon another subject.

"Mr. Bannerman," he said, as soon as he had an opportunity between "fish" questions, "did you say you'd give a hundred dollars for those trees, just as they stand? What are they good for?"

"Jack," exclaimed the sharp-looking man he spoke to, "don't you tell anybody I said that. You won't, will you? Come, now, didn't I treat you well while you were in my shop?"

"Yes, you did," said Jack, "but you kept me there only four months. What are those trees good for? You don't use anything but pine."

"Why, Jack," said Bannerman, "it isn't for carpenter work. Three of 'em are curly maples, and that one there's the straightest-grained, biggest, cleanest old cherry! They're for j'iner-work, Jack. But you said you wouldn't tell?"

"I won't tell," said Jack. "Old Hammond owns 'em. I stayed in your shop just long enough to learn the carpenter's trade. I didn't learn j'iner-work. Don't you want me again?"

"Not just now, Jack; but Sam and I've got a bargain coming with Hammond, and he owes us some, now, and you mustn't put in and spile the trade for us. I'll do ye a good turn, some day. Don't you tell."

Jack promised again and the carpenters walked away, leaving him looking up at the trees and thinking how it would seem to see them topple over and come crashing down into the Cocahutchie, to be made up into chairs and tables. Just as long as he could remember anything he had seen the old trees standing guard there, summer and winter, leafy or bare, and they were like old friends to him.

"I'll go home," he said, at last. "There hasn't been a house built in Crofield for years and years. It isn't any kind of place for carpentering, or for anything else that I know how to do."

Then he took a long, silent, thoughtful look up stream, and another down stream, and instead of the gravel and bushes and grass, in one direction, and the rickety bridge and the slippery dam and the dingy old red mill, in the other direction, he seemed to see a vision of great buildings and streets and crowds of busy men, while the swishing ripple of the Cocahutchie changed into the rush and roar of the great city he was setting his heart upon. He gave it up for that evening, and went home and went to bed, but even then it seemed to him as if he were about to let go of something and take hold of something else.

"I've done that often enough," he said to himself. "I'll have to leave the blacksmith's trade now, but I'm kind o' glad I learned it. I'm glad I didn't have my shoes on when I went into the water, though. Soaking isn't good for that kind of shoes. Don't I know? I've worked in every shoe-shop in Crofield, some. Didn't get any pay, except in shoes; but then I learned the trade, and that's something. I never had an opportunity to stay long in any one place, but I could stay in the city."

Then another kind of dreaming set in, and the next thing he knew it was Sunday morning, with a promise of a sunny, sultry, sleepy kind of day.

It was not easy for the Ogden family to shut out all talk about fishing, while they were eating Jack's fish for breakfast, but they avoided the subject until Jack went to dress. Jack was quite another boy by the time he was ready for church. He was skillful with the shoe-brush, and from his shoes upward he was a surprise.

"You do look well," said Mary, as he and she were on their way to church. "But how you did look when you came home last night!"

There was little opportunity for conversation, for the walk before the Ogden family from their gate to the church-door was not long.

The little processions toward the village green did not divide fairly after reaching there that morning. The larger part of each aimed itself at the middle of the green, although the building there was no larger than either of the two that stood at its right and left.

"Everybody's coming to hear Elder Holloway," said Jack. "They say it takes a fellow a good while to learn how to preach."

Mrs. Ogden and Aunt Melinda led their part of the procession, and Jack and his father followed them in. There were ten Ogdens, and the family pew held six. Just as they were going in, some one asked Mary to go into the choir. Little Sally nestled in her mother's lap; Bob and Jim were small and thin and only counted for one; Bessie and Sue went in, and so did their father, and then Jack remarked:

"I'm crowded out, father. I'll find a place, somewhere."

"There isn't any," said the blacksmith. "Every place is full."

He shook his head until the points of his Sunday collar scratched him, but off went Jack, and that was the last that was seen of him until they were all at home again.

Mary Ogden had her reasons for not expecting to sing in the choir that day, but she went when sent for. The gallery was what Jack called a "coop," and would hold just eighteen persons, squeezed in. Usually it was only half full, but on a great day, what was called the "old choir" was sure to turn out. There were no girls nor boys in the "old choir." There had been three seats yet to fill when Mary was sent for, but Miss Glidden and Miss Roberts and her elder sister from Mertonville came in just then. So, when Mary reached the gallery, Miss Glidden leaned over, smiled, and said very benevolently:

"You will not be needed to-day, Mary Ogden. The choir is filled."

The organ began to play at that moment, somewhat as if it had lost its temper. Mr. Simmons, the choir-leader (whenever he could get there), flushed and seemed about to say something. He was the one who had sent for Mary, and it was said that he had been heard to say that it would be good to have "some music, outside of the organ." Before he could speak, however, Mary was downstairs again. Seats were offered her in several of the back pews, and she took one under the gallery. She might as well have had a sounding-board behind her, arranged so as to send her voice right at the pulpit. Perhaps her temper was a little aroused, and she did not know how very full her voice was when she began the first hymn. All were singing, and they could hear the organ and the choir, but through, over, and above them all sounded the clear, ringing notes of Mary Ogden's soprano. Elder Holloway, sitting in the pulpit, put up a hand to one ear, as half-deaf men do, and sat up straight, looking as if he was hearing some good news. He said afterward that it helped him preach; but then Mary did not know it. When all the services were over, she slipped out into the vestibule to wait for the rest. She stood there when Miss Glidden came downstairs. The portly lady was trying her best to smile and look sweet.

"Splendid sermon, Mary Ogden," said she. "I hope you'll profit by it. I sha'n't ask you to take my class this afternoon. Elder Holloway's going to inspect the school. I'll be glad to have you present, though, as one of my best scholars."

Mary went home as quickly as she could, and the first remark she made was to Aunt Melinda.

"Her class!" she said. "Why she hasn't been there in six weeks. She had only four in it when she left, and there's a dozen now."

The Ogden procession homeward had been longer than when it went to church. Jack understood the matter the moment he came into the dining-room, for both extra leaves had been put into the extension-table.

"There's company," he said aloud. "You couldn't stretch that table any farther, unless you stretched the room."

"Jack," said his mother, "you must come afterward. You can help Mary wait on the table."

Jack was as hungry as a young pickerel, but there was no help for it, and he tried to reply cheerfully:

"I'm getting used to being crowded out. I can stand it."

"Where'd you sit in church?" asked his mother.

"Out on the stoop," said Jack, "but I didn't go till after I'd sat in five pews inside."

"Sorry you missed the sermon," said his mother. "It was about Jerusalem."

"I heard him," said Jack; "you could hear him halfway across the green. It kept me thinking about the city, all the while. I'm going, somehow."

Just then the talk was interrupted by the others, who came in from the parlor.

"I declare, Ogden," said the editor, "we shall quite fill your table. I'm glad I came, though. I'll print a full report of it all in the Mertonville Eagle."

"That's Murdoch, the editor," said Jack to himself. "That's his paper. Ours was a Standard,—but it's bu'sted."

"There's no room for a newspaper in Crofield," said the blacksmith. "They tried one, and it lasted six months, and my son worked on it all the time it ran."

Mr. Murdoch turned and looked inquisitively at Jack through a huge pair of tortoise-shell-rimmed glasses.

"That's so," said Jack; "I learned to set type and helped edit the paper. Molly and I did all the clipping and most of the writing, one week."

"Did you?" said the editor emphatically. "Then you did well. I remember there was one strong number."

"Molly," said Jack, as soon as they were out in the kitchen, "there's five besides our family. They won't leave a thing for us."

"There's hardly enough for them, even," said Mary. "What'll we do?"

"We can cook!" said Jack, with energy. "We'll cook while they're eating. You know how, and so do I."

"You can wait on table as well as I can," said Mary.

There was something cronyish and also self-helpful, in the way Jack and Molly boiled eggs and toasted bread and fried bacon and made coffee, and took swift turns at eating and at waiting on the table.

The editor of the Eagle heard the whole of the trout item, and about the runaway, and told Jack to send him the next big trout he caught.

There was another item of news that was soon to be ready for Mr. Murdoch. Jack was conscious of a restless, excited state of mind, and Mary said things that made him worse.

"You want to get somewhere else as badly as I do," he remarked, just as they came back from taking in the pies to the dinner-table.

"I feel, sometimes, as if I could fly!" exclaimed Mary. Jack walked out through the hall to the front door, and stood there thinking, with a hard-boiled egg in one hand and a piece of toast in the other.

The street he looked into was silent and deserted, from the bridge to the hotel corner. He looked down to the creek, for a moment, and then he looked the other way.

"I believe Molly could do 'most anything I could do," he said to himself; "unless it was catching a runaway team. She couldn't ha' caught that wagon. Hullo, what's that? Jingo! The hotel cook must have made a regular bonfire to fry my trout!"

He wheeled as he spoke, and dashed back through the house, shouting:

"Father, the Washington Hotel's on fire!—over the kitchen!"

"Ladder, Jack. Rope. Bucket," cried the tall blacksmith, coolly rising from the table, and following. As for the rest, beginning with the editor of the Eagle, it was almost as if they had been told that they were themselves on fire. Even Aunt Melinda exclaimed: "He ought to have told us more about it! Where is it? How'd it ever catch? Oh, dear me! It's the oldest part of the hotel. It's as dry as a bone, and it'll burn like tinder!"

Everybody else was saying something as all jumped and ran, but Jack and his father were silent. Ladder, rope, water-pails, were caught up, as if they were going to work in the shop, but the moment they were in the street again it seemed as if John Ogden's lungs must be as deep as the bellows of his forge.

"Fire! Fire! Fire!" His full, resonant voice sent out the sudden warning.
Fighting the Fire.
Fighting the Fire.

"Fire! Fire! Fire!" shouted Jack, and every child of the Ogden family, except Mary, echoed with such voice as belonged to each.

Through the wide gate of the hotel barn-yard dashed the blacksmith and his son, with their ladder, at the moment when Mrs. Livermore came out at the kitchen door, wiping a plate. All the other inmates of the hotel were gathered around the long table in the dining-hall, and they were too busy with pie and different kinds of pudding, to notice anything outdoors.

"Where is the fire, Mr. Ogden?" she said, in a fatigued tone.

"The fire's on your roof, close to the chimney," said the blacksmith. "May be we can put it out, if we're quick about it. Call everybody to hand up water."

Up went a pair of hands, and out came a great scream. Another shrill scream and another, followed in quick succession, and the plate she had held, fell and was shivered into fragments on the stone door-step.

"Foi-re! Foi-re! Foi-re-re-re!" yelled the hotel cook. "The house is a-bur-rnin'! Wa-ter! Waw-aw-ter!"

The doors to passage-ways of the hotel were open, and in a second more her cry was taken up by voices that sent the substance of it ringing through the dining-hall.

Plates fell from the hands of waiters, coffee-cups were upset, chairs were overturned, all manner of voices caught up the alarm.

It would have been a very serious matter but for the promptness of Jack Ogden and his very cool father. The ladder was planted and climbed, there was a quick dash along the low but high-ridged roof of the kitchen addition of the hotel,—the rope was put around Jack's waist, and then he was able safely to use both hands in pouring water from the pails around the foot of the chimney. Other feet came fast to the foot of the ladder. More went tramping into the rooms under the roof. The pumps in the kitchen and in the barn-yard were worked with frantic energy; pail after pail was carried upstairs and up the ladder; water was thrown in all directions; nothing was left undone that could be done, and a great many things were done that seemed hardly possible.

"Hot work, Jack," said his father. "It's a-gaining on us. Glad they'd all about got through dinner,—though Livermore tells me he's insured."

"I can stand it," said Jack. "They have steam fire-engines in the city, though. Oh, but wouldn't I like to see one at work, once. I'd like to be a fireman!"

"That's about what you are, just now," said his father, and then he turned toward the ladder and shouted:

"Hurry up that water! Quick, now! Bring an axe! I want to smash the roof in. Bear it, Jack. We've got to beat this fire."

The main building of the Washington Hotel was long, rather than high, with an open veranda along Main Street. The third story was mainly steep roof and dormer-windows, and the kitchen addition had only a story and a half. It was an easy building to get into or out of. Very quickly, after the cry of "Fire!" was heard, the only people in it, upstairs, were such of the guests as had the pluck to go and pack their trunks. The lower floor was very well crowded, and it was almost a relief to the men actually at work as firemen that so many other men kept well back because they were in their "Sunday-go-to-meeting" clothes.

Everybody was inclined to praise Jack Ogden and his father, who were making so brave a fight on the roof within only a few feet of the smoke and blaze. It was heroic to look a burning house straight in the face and conquer it. During fully half an hour there seemed to be doubt about the victory, but the pails of water came up rapidly, a line of men and boys along the roof conveyed them to the hands of Jack, and the fire had a damp time of it, with no wind to help. The blacksmith had chopped a hole in the roof, and Tom and Sam Bannerman, the carpenters, were already calculating what they would charge old Livermore to put the addition in order again.

"There, Jack," said his father, at last, "we can quit, now. The fire's under. Somebody else can take a turn. It's the hottest kind of work. Come along. We've done our share, and a little more, too."

Jack had just swallowed a puff of smoke, but as soon as he could stop coughing, he said:

"I've had enough. I'm coming."

Other people seemed to agree with them; but there would have been less said about it if little Joe Hawkins had not called out:

"Three cheers for the Ogdens!"

The cheers were given as the two volunteer firemen came down the ladder, but there were no speeches made in reply. Jack hurried back home at once, but his father had to stop and talk with the Bannermans and old Hammond, the miller.

"Jack," said his mother, looking at him, proudly, from head to foot, "you're always doing something or other. We were looking at you, all the while."

"He hasn't hurt his Sunday clothes a bit," said Aunt Melinda, but there was quite a crowd around the gate, and she did not hug him.

He was a little damp, his face was smoky, his shirt-collar was wilted, and his shoes would require a little work, but otherwise he was none the worse.

Jack went into the house, saying that he must brush his clothes; but, really it was because he wished to get away. He did not care to talk to anybody.

"I never felt so, in all my life, as I did when sitting on that roof, fighting that fire," he said aloud, as he went upstairs; and he did not know, even then, how excited he had been, silent and cool as he had seemed. In that short time, he had dreamed of more cities than he was ever likely to see, and of doing more great things than he could ever possibly do, and when he came down the ladder he felt older than when he went up. He had no idea that much the same thoughts had come to Mary, nor did he know how fully she believed that he could do anything, and that she was as capable as he.

"Father's splendid, too," she said, "but then he never had any chance, here, and Mother didn't either. Jack ought to have a chance."