The sudden roar that followed this announcement shook the big glasses and bottles on the low table.

“So you’d keep the blankets soaked, would you?” remarked Billy, winking at the others.

“I certainly would.”  This came with a certain triumphant tone in his voice.

“Learned that practising on his head,” whispered Podvine.

“Right you are, Poddy; but Muggles, suppose the mill caught first,” chipped in Monteith.  The mill was the apple of his eye.  Fire was what he dreaded —­he never could insure the mill fully against fire.  “What would you protect first—­the mill or the piles of lumber?”

“The lumber, of course—­the mill can use its pumps if the engine-room escapes.”

“Better save the mill,” rejoined Monteith thoughtfully.  “Trade is pretty dull.”  Then he rose from his seat, reached for his hat and strolled out on the portico to take a look around before he turned in.

Muggles’s masterful grasp of a science of which his companions knew as little as they did of the Patagonian dialects came as a distinct surprise.  What else had the beggar been picking up in the way of knowledge?  Maybe Muggles wasn’t such a goat, after all.  That Monteith had approved of his tactics only increased their respect for their companion.  Muggles caught the meaning of the look in their faces and his waistcoat began to pinch him across his chest.  This life was what he needed, he said to himself.  Here were big men—­the lumber-boss was one—­and he was another—­doing big things.  Nothing like getting down to primeval Nature for an inspiration!  “Hugging the sod,” as he named it, had had its effect not only on himself, but on his fellows.  They would never have felt that way toward him at the Magnolia.  The week at Wabacog had widened their horizon—­ widened everybody’s horizon—­as for himself he felt like a Western prairie with limitless possibilities ending in mountains of accomplishment.

That night, an hour after midnight, Muggles found himself sitting bolt upright in bed.  Outside, filling the air of the wilderness, bellowed and roared the deep tones of the steam siren.  Then came a babel of voices gaining in distinctness and volume: 

“Fire, fire, fire!”

Muggles sprang through the door and ran full tilt into Jackson and Bender, who had vaulted from their beds but a second before.  The next instant every man in the bungalow, Monteith at their head, came tumbling out, one after the other.

“Fire!  Fire!  Fire!” rang the cry, repeated by a hundred mill hands rushing toward the mill.  A spark had worked its way through the arrester, some one said, had fallen into the sawed stuff, been nursed into a blaze by the night wind, and a roaring flame was in full charge of one pile of lumber and likely to take possession of another.

Muggles looked about him.

His Supreme moment had come!