Mr. Mitchell drawled:  “Wawl, I’m jest a-curin’ some hams.”

As they all pegged dismally homeward, the half-dozen thought that Mr. Mitchell had also just about cured six Volunteers.  And when the half-dozen took off their red flannel shirts that day, they no longer looked upon them as red badges of courage, but rather as a sort of penitentiary uniform.

The fire department of Kingston had such another long snooze that the half-dozen began now to rejoice in the hope that there would not be another fire before vacation-time.  They had almost forgotten that they were Volunteers, and went about their studies and pastimes with the fine care-freedom of glorious boyhood.

* * * * *

Then came a cold wave suddenly out of the West—­a tidal wave of bitter winds and blizzardy snow-storms, that sent the mercury down into the shoes of the thermometer.

Things froze up with a snap that you could almost hear.

It seemed that it would be impossible even to put a nose out of the warm rooms without hearing a sudden crackle, and seeing it drop to the ground, and the ears after it.  The very stoves had to be coaxed and coddled to keep warm.

Jumbo said:  “Why, I have to button my overcoat around my stove, and feed it with coal in a teaspoon, to keep it from freezing to death!”

The academicians went to and from their classes on the dead run, and even the staid professors scampered along the slippery paths with more thought of speed than of dignity.

That night was the coldest that the oldest inhabitant of Kingston could remember.  The very winds seemed to be tearing madly about, trying to keep warm, and screaming with pain, they were so cold!  Ugh! my ears tingle to think of it.  The Lakerimmers piled the coal high in their stoves, and piled their overcoats, and even the rugs from the floor, over their beds.

Sleepy, whose blood was so slow that he was never warm enough in winter and never very warm in summer, even spread all the newspapers he could find inside his bed, and crawled in between them, having heard that paper is one of the warmest of coverings.  The journals crackled like, popcorn every time he moved; but he moved very little and it would have been a loud noise indeed that could have kept him awake.

At a very early hour, then, the Volunteers and the rest of the Dozen were as snug as bugs in rugs.

And then,—­oh, merciless fate!—­at the coldest and dismalest hour of the whole twenty-four, when the night is about over and the day is not begun, at about 3 A.M., what, oh, what! should sound, even above the howls of the wind and the rattlings of the windows and doors, but that fiend of a fire-bell!

It clanged and banged and clamored and boomed and pounded its way even through the harveyized armor-plate of the Lakerim ship of sleep.