Slap, slap! "Fire, fire!" Canter, canter, canter! Neighbors looked out of their windows, and, recognizing Ducklow's wagon and old mare in such an astonishing plight, and Ducklow himself, without his hat, rising from his seat, and reaching forward in wild attitudes, brandishing the reins, at the same time rending the azure with yells, thought he must be insane. He drove to the top of the hill, and looking beyond, in expectation of seeing his house wrapped in flames, discovered that the smoke proceeded from a brush-heap which his neighbor Atkins was burning in a field near by. The revulsion of feeling that ensued was almost too much for the excitable Ducklow. His strength went out of him. For a little while there seemed to be nothing left of him but tremor and cold sweat. Difficult as it had been to get the old mare in motion, it was now even more difficult to stop her. "Why! what has got into Ducklow's old mare? She's running away with him! Who ever heard of such a thing!" And Atkins, watching the ludicrous spectacle from his field, became almost as weak from laughter as Ducklow was from the effects of fear. At length Ducklow succeeded in checking the old mare's speed, and in turning her about. It was necessary to drive back for his hat. By this time he could hear a chorus of shouts, "Fire! fire! fire!" over the hill. He had aroused the neighbors as he passed, and now they were flocking to extinguish the flames. "A false alarm! a false alarm!" said Ducklow, looking marvellously sheepish, as he met them. "Nothing but Atkins's brush-heap!" "Seems to me you ought to have found that out 'fore you raised all creation with your yells!" said one hyperbolical fellow. "You looked like the Flying Dutchman! This your hat? I thought 'twas a dead cat in the road. No fire, no fire!"--turning back to his comrades,--"only one of Ducklow's jokes." Nevertheless, two or three boys there were who would not be convinced, but continued to leap up, swing their caps, and scream "Fire!" against all remonstrance. Ducklow did not wait to enter into explanations, but, turning the old mare about again, drove home amid the laughter of the bystanders and the screams of the misguided youngsters. As he approached the house, he met Taddy rushing wildly up the street. "Thaddeus! Thaddeus! where ye goin', Thaddeus?" "Goin' to the fire!" cried Taddy. "There isn't any fire, boy!" "Yes, there is! Didn't ye hear 'em? They've been yellin' like fury." "It's nothin' but Atkins's brush." "That all?" And Taddy appeared very much disappointed. "I thought there was goin' to be some fun. I wonder who was such a fool as to yell fire jest for a darned old brush-heap!" Ducklow did not inform him. "I've got to drive over to town and git Reuben's trunk. You stand by the mare while I step in and brush my hat." Instead of applying himself at once to the restoration of his beaver, he hastened to the sitting-room, to see that the bonds were safe. "Heavens and 'arth!" said Ducklow.