with the men to the straw stack. "We'll help you," he cried. "I'll wake Gabe." There was hurrrying for water pails. The women appeared, crying shrilly, and in the glare that reddened the sky the yard seemed, full of mad men racing heedlessly. "John," whispered Jane, coming up to him as he drew water from the well, "let me do this. There are two horses in the pasture. You and Bob go--fly--fly." The Texan came running from the barn, which was beginning to blaze. Dolan and Carnine still were in it. Then from the wood back of the camp fifty men appeared, riding at a gallop. Lige Bemis and General Ward rode in front of the troop of horsemen. Carnine was still in the burning barn asleep, and there was no leader to give command to the dazed guards. Ward and Bemis ran up, motioning the men back, and Ward cried, "Shall we help you save your stock and barn, or must we fight?" It was addressed to the crowd, but before they could answer, Dolan stumbled out of the barn through the smoke and flames crying, "Boys,--boys,--I can't find him." He saw the rescuing party and shouted, "Boys,--Gabe's in there asleep and I can't find him." The wind had suddenly veered, and the crackling flames had reached the straw roof of the barn. The fire was gaining headway, and the three buckets that were coming from the well had no effect on it. As the last horse was pulled out of the door, one side of the straw wall of the barn fell away on fire and showed Gabriel Carnine sleeping not ten feet from the flames. Lige Bemis soused his handkerchief in water, tied it over his mouth, and ran in. He grabbed the sleeping man and dragged him through, the flames; but both were afire as they came into the open. Now in this story Elijah Westlake Bemis is not shown often in a heroic light. Yet he had in his being the making of a hero, for he was brave. And heroism, after all, is only effective reliance on some virtue in a crisis, in spite of temptations to do the easy excusable thing. And when Lige Bemis sneaks through this story in unlovely guise, remember that he has a virtue that once exalted even him. "Gabe Carnine," said Ward, as the barn fell and there was nothing more to fear, "we didn't fire your haystack; I give you my word on that. But we are going to take these boys home now. And you better let us alone." That John Barclay remembered, and then he remembered being in the front yard of the farm-house a moment--alone with Jane Mason, his bridle rein over his arm. Her hair was down, and she looked wild and beautiful. The straw was still burning back of the house, and the glow was everywhere. He always remembered that she held his hand and would not let him go, and there two memories are different; for she always maintained that he did, right there and then, and he recollected that as he mounted his horse he tried to kiss her and failed. Perhaps both are right--who knows? But both agree that as he sat there an instant on his horse, she threw kisses at him and he threw them back. And when the men rode away, she stood in the road, and he could see her in the