“Pooh! no.  It’s baby play for me.”  By this time Uncle Ith had evoked the second gruff note from the deep throat of the imprisoned monster below.  Then came a third in quicker succession, and louder, as if the bell had warmed up to the work, and then other notes, until the district had been struck; and then the bell, as if rejoicing in its strength to resist blows, murmured plaintively for a repetition of them.  Long before this sad sound had died away, the deep bass of the City Hall bell, the shrill tenor of the Post Office bell, and the intermediate pitches of the bells all over the city, had taken up the chorus of alarm.  There was a rattle of engines, hose carriages, and hook-and-ladder trucks through the streets.  There was a frantic rush of men and boys, some with cumbrous fire-caps on their heads, and putting on their coats as they ran.  How they knew the location of the fire, none could guess, for it had not yet streamed out against the sky; but know it they did; and the dove goes to its cote not more directly than they centred from all parts of the district upon the exact spot of the fire.  Meanwhile, Uncle Ith lashed his mighty instrument into a sonorous fury; and all the other bells played their echo, even to the far-away tinkler on Mount Morris, which, having few fires in its own neighborhood to report, took a pleasure in telling its little world of those which were raging down town.

For the information of his uncle, and to atone in part for his previous neglect, Bog devoted only a half eye to the Minford family, and kept the rest of his optics on the fire.  Just after its discovery, the smoke had loomed up dense and black, as if it were trying to suffocate the flames beneath.  Then it changed rapidly to a light blue, and was chased faster upward by two tongues of fire.  These tongues leaped aloft with a sudden impulse, and shed a revelation of light over acres of houses, and brought out church steeples in vivid relief against the sky, and put a new gilding on storm-beat en vanes and weathercocks.  All this Bog described in his own way to his uncle; and his uncle, stooping at the lever, kept on ringing with unabated zeal; and all the other bells banged away like an orchestra of which Uncle Ith was the leader.

Then Bog saw the forms of men suddenly spring into sight, as if out of the very roof, between the two fiery tongues.  The tongues licked the air about them with savage whirls; but the brave fellows dodged back, and were unhurt.  Then, advancing boldly again, they released their hands from something which they had been holding, and lo! four jets of water struck at the very roots of the flames, tripped at them, and made them stagger, drove them twice into the roof, and caught them with deadly accuracy as they came out again; and, in less than five minutes, changed all their brave splendor to dull, black smoke, and set the victor’s mark upon them—­the column of white steam which arises from the half-quenched embers, and proclaims that the fire is put out of mischief at last.