"Great guns!" exclaimed Dick. "There's things doing in there! That furnace never smokes as hard as all that and besides the Janitor always has Saturday afternoons off. Perhaps the basement door is unlocked." Dick ran down the steps to find that door, too, securely fastened. "I guess," said Dick, with another look at the curling smoke about the upper windows, "the thing for me to do is to turn in an alarm." Dick happened to know where the alarm-box was situated, so, feeling most important, yet withal strangely shaky as to legs, the lad made for the corner, a good long block distant, smashed the glass according to directions, and sent in the alarm, a thing that he had always longed to do. Five minutes later, the big red hosecart, with gong ringing, firemen shouting and dogs barking, was dashing up the street. The hook and ladder company followed and a meat wagon, or rather a meat-wagon horse, galloped after. The foundry whistle began to give the ward number in long, melancholy, terrifying toots and the hosehouse bell joined in with a mad clamor. People poured from the houses along the hosecart's route, for in Lakeville it was customary for private citizens to attend all fires. Dick, feeling most important, stood on the schoolhouse steps and pointed upward. The hosecart stopped with a jerk that must have surprised the horses, firemen leaped down and in a twinkling the foremost had smashed in the big glass door. "It's a fire all right," said he. Meanwhile the Janitor, chopping wood in his own backyard (which was his way of enjoying his afternoons off), had listened intently to the fire alarm. "Six-Two," said he, suddenly dropping his ax. "Guess I'll have a look at that fire. That's pretty close to my school." CHAPTER XII The Fire JEAN, Bettie, Marjory and Mabel ran with the rest to see what was happening, for their homes were not far from the schoolhouse. Indeed, owing to its ample setting, the building was plainly visible from all directions; and from a distance, it always loomed larger than anything else in the town. To all the citizens it was a most unusual and alarming sight to see thick, black smoke curling about the eaves and rising in a threatening column above the familiar building. Such a thing had never happened before. Marjory was the first of the quartette to discover what was going on. She had opened her bedroom window the better to count the strokes of the fire-bell when, to her astonishment, she saw the fire itself or at least the smoke thereof. Her first thought was of her three friends; for of course no Cottager could view such a spectacle as this promised to be without the companionship of the other three. So Marjory flew around the block--like a little excited hen, Dr. Tucker said--and collected the girls. They ran in a body to join the swelling crowd that surrounded the smoking building. "Keep back out of danger," called Aunty Jane, who was watching the fire from her upstairs window.