At last the stable fire began to die down. The current of air from the northeast had become stronger, and the column of smoke was swaying more and more to the southwest. Just as daylight began to appear in the east the last remaining timber of the stable fell, and, though there was a great cloud of sparks and still much heat, I saw that unless a strong east wind should spring up there was no longer danger that the town would be consumed. By this time I was cold and stiff, my face scorched by the fire, and my clothes frozen with the water from the pailfuls I had carried. I went into the hotel. Kaiser was so glad to see me that he reared up and put his forepaws on my shoulders. I was patting and praising him, when suddenly the question, What caused the fire? flashed into my mind. There had been no trace of Pike. From the windmill tower I had been unable to see any trail leading from the way he would come. There was no explanation except that it must have been caused by the same thing that had made me so much other trouble. Till it was broad daylight I paced up and down the office floor, unable to stop. For two days I thought of little else, and brooded on it till I was half sick. It seems to me as I look back at it that every time I got fairly desperate through lonesomeness or pure fright I went and dug a snow tunnel. I was as bad as a mole for tunnels; and I meant to tell about my system before this; but so many things keep popping into my mind, what with my memory and with the old hotel register and the letters to my mother lying spread out before me, that I have not once got around to mention any of them except the first, which connected the hotel and the bank, directly across the street. I was so taken up with this that soon after New-Year's I decided to build some others. I was keeping up at that time five fires (or smokes) besides the one in the hotel, to wit: one in the harness shop and one in Joyce's, both at the north end of the street and opposite each other; one in the bank; one in Townsend's store at the south end of the street on the west side, and one in the depot out across the square in front of the south end of the street. There was a chance for a good tunnel to all of these except to the depot; here the northwest wind had swept across the square and the ground in some places was almost bare.