As Judge Priest, yet half asleep but waking up mighty fast, shoved his stout legs into his trousers and tucked the tails of his nightshirt down inside the waistband, he decided it must be his barn and not his house that was afire. The smoke which filled the room seemed to be eddying in through the side window, from across the end of the ell structure. He thought of his old white mare, Mittie May, fast in her stall under the hay loft, and of Jeff, who was one of the soundest sleepers in the world, in his room right alongside the mow. There was need for him to move, and move fast. He must awaken Jeff first, and then get Mittie May out of danger. Barefooted, he felt his way across the room and along the hall and down the stairs, mending his gait as he went. And then, as he jerked the front door open and stumbled out upon the porch, he came into violent collision with Ed Tilghman, Junior, who lived across the street, and who had just bounded up the porch steps with the idea of hammering on the front-door panels. Tilghman was a young man and the judge an old one; it was inevitable the judge should suffer the more painful consequences of the sudden impact of their two bodies together. He went down sideways with a great hard thump, his forehead striking against a sharp corner of the door jamb. He was senseless, and a little stream of blood was beginning to trickle down his face as Tilghman dragged him down off the porch into the yard and stretched him on his back in the grass, and then ran to fetch water. In that same minute the big bell in the tower of fire headquarters, half a mile away, began sounding in measured beats, and a small hungry-looking tongue of flame licked up across the sill and flickered for a moment through the smoke which was pouring forth out of the bathroom window and rolling across the flat top of the extension. The smoke gushed out still thicker, smothering down the red pennon, but in a second or two it showed again, and this time it brought with it two more like it. The bathroom window became a frame for a cloudy pink glare, and the purring note of the fire became a brisk and healthy crackle as it ate through the seasoned clapboards of the outer wall. All of a sudden, so it seemed, the yard and the street were full of people. Promptly there began to happen most of the things that do happen at a fire. As for instance: Mr. Milus Miles, who arrived among the very first and who had a commandingly loud voice, mounted a rustic bench alongside the croquet ground and called for volunteers to form a bucket brigade. That his recruits would have no buckets to pass after they had enrolled themselves for service was with Mr. Miles a minor consideration. It was the spirit of the thing, the forethought, the responsibility, the aptitude for leadership in a work of succour--all these inspired him.