"If they haven't managed to git out three anvils!" remarked the Squire. "Hear them guns. Crackers, too. Tin horns. They're workin' a hoss-fiddle on the back fence. There never was sech a racket in this 'ere town before. No, nor sech a blaze either. It beats a house a-fire." So it did, but there was no insurance on the old elm. When the good and quiet people around that square, on all sides except the one where the meeting-house and the academy stood, sprang out of bed and rushed to their windows, you could have read print, if it were large enough, anywhere about the middle of the green. And every head out of every window had something special to say about "those boys." Up shot the flame over the pile of boxes and barrels, and the heap of broken boards and fence rails; up the well-tarred trunk, with a fierce fizzing and spluttering, and then it sprang along the boughs, and mounted and mounted, until every head at the windows was compelled to remark, also, "What on earth's got hold of that there tree?--it burns as if it was rosin." Fourth of July had come, and all Kerim knew it; but before breakfast-time it was equally well known that the boys were going to have a "celebration," with all the regular honors. "Mr. Mortis?" said everybody; "why, he can't make a speech. Bill Allen? It ought to have been one of the trustees, or somebody." Perhaps so; but the old folks had thrown the day away, and the boys had picked it up, and they worked at it like a swarm of bumble-bees. By noon there was a big lumber wagon pulled out close to the spot where the elm-tree had been. It was a curious fact, but there were numbers of other wagons pulled up near that one before two o'clock, and a good many of the Kerim people had unexpected visitors of country friends from beyond Kerim, who said "they'd a sight ruther stay and hear the home doin's than go on to Plumville." There was public spirit in them, and the thing spread so fast that when two o'clock came, and Mr. Mortis climbed into the wagon, followed by Bill Allen, and as many more of the boys as could get in, every man in Kerim who thought himself at all eloquent envied them the very respectable audience gathered around the elm-tree ash heap and the "celebration." Mr. Mortis was barely twenty, but he was studying law, and the boys had picked him out because, as Bill Allen said: "He's got more voice than a bull. What we want is noise." They got it from Mr. Mortis, and the whole crowd got a big surprise with it, for the "'dress" was wonderfully good. Bill Allen, too, did his part well, and read the "Decoration of Inderpendence" as if it were something in which he took a personal interest. Old Squire Garnsey stepped right forward at the end of it to say, "Bill Allen, you read that thing just prime." "I didn't make it up, though." "And, Mr. Mortis, I'm proud of you. All Kerim is. We'd no idee you could do it."