“I am going to help here!” cried Snap, throwing off his coat, and he went to work with a will and the other lads did the same.  The buckets of water came along swiftly, but for a long time it looked as if the whole plant was doomed to destruction.  The fire was in a shed next to the saw mill itself, a place one end of which was used as an office by the mill company.  The wind was blowing the sparks directly to the mill proper.

“Phew! but this is hot work!” cried one of the men.  “Can’t stand this much longer.”

“Don’t give up!” pleaded the master of the mill.  “Perhaps the wind will change.”

It certainly was warm work, as all of the boys found out.  The sparks and brands were dropping over them, and once Snap’s shirt sleeve caught fire, while Shep had a spark blister his neck and cause him to let out a yell like an Indian.

In the midst of the excitement, Mr. Dodge arrived, and a moment later the local fire engine, an old-fashioned affair purchased from a neighboring city.  The stream of water, however, did good service, and the fire was kept largely to the shed in which it had started.  The mill itself caught a dozen times, but the flames were extinguished before they did material damage.  Finally the wind veered around, blowing the sparks toward a cleared spot in the woods, and then all saw that the worst of the affair was over.  But men and boys kept at their labors, and did not stop until every spark of the conflagration had been extinguished.

“Now it is over, I am going down to the river and wash up,” said Snap to Shep, and they walked to the edge of the stream, followed by Whopper and Giant.  “I feel dirty from head to foot.”

“Your father can be thankful that the mill didn’t go,” said Whopper.  “Gosh, what a blaze!  I thought the whole county was going to burn up.  I got burnt in about ’leventeen hundred spots.”

“And I let a bucket of water drop on my foot,” put in Giant.  “Say, but didn’t the edge of the bucket feel nice on my little toe!” and he limped along to the water’s edge.

Having washed up, the boys returned to the scene of the fire.  They found the mill master, Tom Neefus, in earnest conversation with Mr. Dodge.

“You saw the rascal do it?” asked Snap’s father.

“I certainly did,” replied Tom Neefus.  “I started to catch him, but then I came back to put out the blaze.  I made up my mind it would be better to stop the fire than catch the man, even though he was such a villain.”

“Who’s a villain, father?” asked Shep.

“The man who started this fire.”

“Did a man start it?” asked the boy, while several others drew closer to listen.

“So Mr. Neefus says.  He caught the fellow at the office desk.  In a corner the fellow had thrown a pile of shavings and saturated it with oil.  As he ran away he threw a handful of lighted matches into the shavings and they caught instantly.”