Bestowing a few hasty strokes upon the first spot of spreading flame, I hastened to the next and was vigorously beating that, when, glancing behind me, I saw to my dismay that the first was blazing again. Ahead of me was another, rapidly increasing; while the roaring, towering flame at the heap was sputtering ominously, as if preparing to send out a shower of sparks. And, to make matters worse, I felt a puff of wind on my face. Terror-stricken I shouted: "Father! The fire is running! Come quick!" In a moment he was beside me, and for a short time we fought the flame desperately. "It'll reach the woods in spite of us!" he gasped, as we came together after a short struggle. "There isn't a neighbor within half a mile, and before you could get help it would be too late! Besides, one alone couldn't do anything against it!" A sudden inspiration seized me. "I'm going to signal to Harry!" I cried. "If he sees it he'll come and, perhaps, bring help with him!" "Hurry!" he shouted back, and I started for the barn. The distance was short. As I reached it I glanced over to Harry's. There were some white spots on his barn. He was signalling and, of course, could see my signal. Excitedly I placed the flags in 1 2 3 4, and, without waiting for an answer, tore back across the fields to the fire. It was gaining rapidly. In a large circle, a dozen rods across, it advanced toward the buildings on one hand and swept toward the woods on the other. We could not conquer it. We could only hope to hinder its progress until help should arrive. [Illustration: IN OBEDIENCE TO THE SIGNALS.] Fifteen minutes of desperate struggle and then, with a ringing cheer, Harry and his father dashed upon the scene. Their arrival infused me with new courage; and four pairs of hands and four willing hearts at length conquered the flame, two rods from the woods! My father sank down upon a rock, and, as he wiped the perspiration from his smutty face, he said: "There, boys, your signalling has saved the prettiest timber lot in the town of Hardwick! I shall not forget it!" Were we not justly proud? Two days after I found upon my plate at breakfast a small package, which contained two pretty little spy-glasses. "Perhaps they will enable you to enlarge your 'signal code,'" was all my father said when I thanked him. We soon found that with the aid of the glasses we could distinguish any color. So we made a set of blue flags, which gave us thirty more communications by using them in place of the white ones. And, by mixing the blue flags with the white combinations and the white with the blue combinations, over _two hundred_ communications could be signalled. Thus we could converse with each other by the hour. The way we wrote down the mixed combinations was, by using a heavy figure to represent a blue flag; as 1[2]4[5], which meant that positions 1 and 4 were occupied by white flags, 2 and 5 by blue ones.