A desire stirred in him to steal out and find the particular tree toad that was chirping above his mates and to watch him. He drank in the night with its clear jade sky, littered with tatters of pink and gold. He answered the wink of the single star, his old friend from boyhood, and then he remembered!

Out there was the meadow and the mist and the silver sand in the starlight, but off down the street in the quiet churchyard were two graves! Out the other way was a dead schoolhouse where other boys played ball and bluffed their way through lessons. He was not a boy. He had no part in this old village life. He had been a fool to come. His life was dead. He had thought he could come to this old refuge for inspiration to write a book that would add to the world’s store of wisdom and then pass on—out—Where? How different it all was from what he had dreamed in those happy boyhood days!

Even the old church with its faith in God, in love, in humanity and life, in death and resurrection! What were they now but dead fallacies? Poor Aunt Lavinia with her beautiful trust! How hard she strove to teach him lies! Poor Uncle Standish, clean, kind, loving, severe, but fatherly and Christian—always Christian! How far he had gone from all that now! It seemed as different—the life he had been living since Alice died—as a windswept, arid desert of sand in the pitch-dark would be from this living, dusky, mysterious, pulsing meadow under the quiet evening sky. And yet—! Well, he believed in the meadow of course, because he knew it, had lived with the bugs and butterflies and bits of growing things. If he had only read about it or been taught of it he might perhaps think the earth all arid. He had a passing wish that he might again believe in the old faith that seemed to his world-weary heart like an old couch where one might lie at peace and really rest. But of course that was out of the question. He had eaten of the tree of knowledge, and he could not go back into Eden. Poor credulous Uncle Standish, poor Aunt Lavinia! Strong and fine and good but woefully ignorant and gullible! How little they knew of life! How pleasant to have been like them! And yet, they stagnated in the old town, walking in grooves their forbearers had carved for them, thinking the thoughts that had been taught them. That was not life.

Well, why not? He had seen life. And what had it given him? Dust and ashes! A bitter taste! Responsibilities that galled! Hindrances and disappointments! Two daughters whom he did not know! An empty heart and a jaded soul! Ah! Why live?

Into the middle of his bitter thoughts a crimson stain flared into the luminous gray of the evening sky as if it had been spilled by an impish hand, and almost simultaneously out from the old bell tower in the public square there rang a clang that had never in the years gone by failed to bring his entire being to instant attention. The red flared higher, and down behind the tall chimneys beside the silver beach a little siren set up a shriek that almost drowned out the hurried imperious clang of the firebell. Another instant and the cry went up from young throats down the street, where the voices of play had echoed only a second ago, and following the sound came the gong of the fire engine, the pulsing of the engine motor, the shouts of men, the chime of boys’ voices, hurried, excited, dying away in a breath as the hastily formed procession tore away and was lost in the distance, leaving the tree toads to heal over the torn air.

It took Patterson Greeves only an instant to come to life and answer that call that clanged on after the firemen had gone on their way. He stayed not for hat or coat. He flung open the front door, swung wide the white gate, took one step on the road, and vaulted the fence into the meadow. Down through the dear old mysterious meadow he bounded, finding the way as if he were a boy again, his eye on the crimson flare in the sky. Once he struck his foot against a boulder and fell full length, his head swimming, stars vibrating before his eyes, and for an instant he lay still, feeling the cool of the close-cropped grass in his face, the faint mingle of violet and mint wafting gently like an enchantment over him, and an impulse to lie still seized him, to give up the mad race and just stay here quietly. Then the siren screeched out again, and his senses whirled into line. Footsteps were coming thud, thud across the sod. He struggled halfway up and a strong young arm braced against him and set him on his feet:

“C’mon!” breathed the boy tersely. “It’s some fire!”

“Where is it?” puffed the scientist, endeavoring to keep pace with the lithe young bounds.

“Pickle factory!” murmured the youth, taking a little stream with a single leap. “There goes the hook ‘n’ ladder! We’ll beat ‘em to it. Job Trotter cert’nly takes his time. I’ll bet a hat the minister was running the engine. He certainly can make that little old engine go! Here we are! Down this alley an’ turn to yer right—!”

They came suddenly upon the great spectacle of leaping flames ascending to heaven, making the golden markings of the late-departed sun seem dim and far away as if one drew near to the edge of the pit.

The crude framework of the hastily built factory was already writhing in its death throes.