The Morris farm, as has been said, was a pretty large one, and the same tendency on the part of the owners which had made them set up so very extensive and barn-like a house, had led them, from time to time, to provide the most liberal sort of storage for their crops.  The first barn they had ever built, which was now the oldest and the furthest from the stables and the residence, was a pretty large one.  It was now in a somewhat dilapidated condition, to be sure, and bowed a little northerly by the weight of years which rested on it, but it had still some hope of future usefulness, if it had not been for that tramp and his box of matches.

“There isn’t a bit of use in trying to save it,” exclaimed Ham, as they were whirled in through the wide gate.  “It’s gone.”

“But,” said Mrs. Kinzer, “we can save the other barns, perhaps.  Look at the cinders on the long stable.  If we could only keep them off somehow.”

“We can do it, Ham!” exclaimed Dab, very earnestly.  “Mother, will you send me out a broom and a rope, while Ham and I set up the ladder?”

“You’re the boy for me,” said Ham.  “I guess I know what you’re up to.”

The ladder was one the house painters had been using, and was a pretty heavy one, but it was quickly set up against the largest and most valuable of the barns, and the one, too, which was nearest and most exposed to the burning building and its flying cinders.  The rope was on hand, and the broom, by the time the ladder was in position.

“Ford,” said Dab, “you and Frank help the girls bring water till the men from the village get here.  There’s plenty of pails.  Now, Ham, I’m ready.”

Up they went, and were quickly astride the ridge of the roof.  It would have been perilous work for any man to have ventured further unassisted, but Dab tied one end of the rope firmly around his waist, Ham Morris tied himself to the other, and then Dab could slip down the steep roof in any direction without fear of falling.

But the broom?  As useful as a small engine.  The flying cinders, burning hay or wood, as they alighted on the sun-dried shingles of the roof, needed to be swept off as rapidly as they fell.  Here and there the flames had so good a start that the broom alone would have been insufficient, and there the fast-arriving pails of water came into capital play.  They had to be used economically, of course, but they did the work as effectually as if they had been the streams of a steam fire-engine.  Hard work for Ham and Dab, and now and then the strength and weight and agility of the former were put to pretty severe tests, as Dab danced around under the scorching heat or slipped flat upon the sloping roof.

There were scores and scores of people from the village, now, arriving every moment, and Mrs. Kinzer had all she could do to keep them from “rescuing” every atom of her furniture from the house and piling it up in the road.

“Wait,” she said, quietly.  “If Ham and Dab save the long barn, the fire wont spread any further.  The old barn wont be any loss to speak of, anyhow.”