Accordingly a hundred dollars’ worth of fireworks were ordered from Springfield, and Frank, who came about eight o’clock, was greeted with a rocket which went hissing into the air and fell in sparks of fire just over his shoe-shop, the shingles of which were dry with age and the summer heat. There was a crowd after all to honor him, and an impromptu band, which played “Hail to the Chief,” and “Come, Haste to the Wedding,” and finished up with a grand flourish of “Dixie,” to which many bare feet kept time upon the lawn in front of Millbank. A collation, which Hester in her journal-letter called a “collection,” had been prepared for them on the grounds, and the small boys ate themselves almost sick on ice-cream and raisins, and then halloed with might and main for the bride, who appeared, leaning on her husband’s arm, smiling and bowing, and offering her hand to be shaken, while all the while she was wondering if “the miserable little wretches hadn’t warts or some worse disease which she would catch of them.” The collation over, the bridal party returned to the house, and the crowd went back to their fireworks, to which the tired and slightly disgusted Bell hardly gave a look. She had the headache, and went early to her room, and closing her blinds to shut out the glare of the blue and red lights which annoyed her terribly, she fell asleep, and was dreaming of the missionary Fred when the cry of “Fire, Fire,” aroused her, and Frank looked in with a white, frightened face, telling her the large shoe-shop was on fire, and bidding her not to be alarmed. Some sparks from the first rocket sent up had fallen on the dry roof of the shoe-shop, and set it on fire, the flames creeping under the shingles, and making great headway before they were discovered. It was a long time since there had been a fire in Belvidere, and the excited people hardly knew how to act. Roger had always been tolerably well prepared for such an emergency, but matters at Millbank were managed differently now from what they were when he was master there. The rotary pump was out of order, the engine would not work well at all, and after half an hour or more of orders and counter-orders, of running to and fro, and accomplishing but little, it was certain that nothing could save the huge building, whose roof was one mass of flame, and from whose windows a light was shining brighter than any bonfire ever yet kindled in honor of a bride. When Frank had hinted at demonstrations, for which he would pay, he never dreamed of a bonfire like this, where jets of flame rose far into the sky and shone across the river upon the hills beyond, and made the village as light as day. Bell never went to fires, she said to Mrs. Walter Scott, who, in her dressing-gown, with her shawl over her head, looked in upon her daughter-in-law on her way to join the multitude in the streets. She was too thoroughly city bred to go to fires, and she saw every member of the household depart,—her