The locusts in the grass turned and turned their creaking wheel, and the wind whispered in the tall larches. We heard the thump of hoofs and wheels booming in the covered bridge. It was the doctor, come too late. He put his head down to It's bosom (the cold trickled down our backs), and then he said it was too late. If we had known enough, he said, we might have saved him. We slunk away. It was very lonesome. We kept together, and spoke low. We stopped to hearken for a moment outside the house where the boy had lived that had the spy-glass and the “Swiss Family Robinson.” Some one had told his mother. And then, with a great and terrible fear within us, we ran each to his own home, swiftly and silently. We knew now why mother did not want us to go swimming. But the next afternoon when Chuck Grove whistled in our back alley and held up two fingers, I dropped the hoe and went with him. It was bright daylight then, and that is different from the night. THE FIREMEN'S TOURNAMENT It isn't only Christmas that comes but once a year and when it comes it brings good cheer; it's any festival that is worth a hill of beans, High School Commencement, Fourth of July, Sunday-school excursion, Election' bonfire, Thanksgiving Day (a nice day and one whereon you can eat roast turkey till you can't choke down another bite, and pumpkin-pie, and cranberry sauce. Tell you!)--but about the best in the whole lot, and something the city folks don't have, is Firemen's Tournament. That comes once a year, generally about the time for putting up tomatoes.