“She’s awfully nervous, Nancy is,” said the young farmer, a trifle apologetically; “she would have it at brother Ed’s that she was being burned out of house and home.  We oughtn’t to have stayed, but brother Ed urged us to go home with him.  She’s always that way when she’s away.  We’ve ridden nineteen miles since daybreak, and she believed every mile that we were going to see a burned-down house at the end.”

“Well,” said Old Tilly in a quiet way, so as not to alarm the young farmer, “I guess she was about right this time.  If we hadn’t happened here—­” Then he slipped back into the barn, and the young farmer followed after, and Old Tilly pointed to the blackened corner, while the other two drew near interestedly.

“You see how it struck,” Old Tilly said quietly, “but we put it out after a while.  It is well we happened to be right here.”

The young farmer was gazing at the burned place, with his jaw dropped and a look of terror coming into his blue eyes.

“It did strike!  I should say it did!” he cried excitedly.  “What will Nancy say?”

[Illustration:  “I should say it did strike!” he cried, excitedly.]

Then as a realization came to him that it was owing to the boys that they had a roof over their heads, he turned first to one lad and then to the other, and shook their hands heartily.  There were tears in his eyes, but he did not seem conscious of them.  “I don’t know what Nancy ’ll say,” he reiterated, as he shook one hand after the other up and down like a pump handle.  “We’ll have to be everlastingly obliged to you for the rest of our days,” he said, trying to laugh a little.  But his voice choked, and he turned away to hide his emotion.  Then he dropped down upon a corn-cutter and insisted on hearing the story from beginning to end, although Old Tilly declared time and again, with the other two joining in, that “It was nothing.”

“You call it nothing?  Well, you wait until you’ve worked half a lifetime, as Nancy and me have done, to get a place, and then see what you think about it.  I guess Nancy ’ll believe it’s something.”

Then he stopped as a clear call, “Breakfast!  Breakfast!” came ringing out to them from the open door beyond the pump.  “Perhaps we’d better not say anything about it until after breakfast.  She’s had a powerful uneasy night, and it’s been a good bit of a ride over, too.”

To this the boys assented, and the four walked across the yard to the kitchen door, where the little girl was shyly waiting for them.

“Ain’t you the young chap that beat in the bicycle slow race?” asked Nancy, when she caught a sight of Tilly’s face as he removed his hat.

The other two boys laughed, and the farmer, looking squarely at his visitor, said: 

“Well, I thought I’d seen you somewhere.”

And then they settled down to breakfast in the happiest frame of mind, evidently, that could be imagined.  But all the time Old Tilly kept one hand down at his side, a little out of sight, and the boys noticed that he took upon his plate only such things as he could very easily manage with one hand.  The breakfast, for a hurried one, was very satisfactory indeed.  Jot and Kent ate with full appreciation of it.