"It's all right, Stirling," a.s.sured Dale Wacker. "We cleaned out the barrel and we've rammed home a good solid charge, with a long fuse ready to light. Guess it will stir up the sleepy old town for once, hey?"

Bart was in for any harmless sport, yet he fumbled the lighted piece of punk undecidedly.

"I don't know about this, fellows"--he began.

"Oh! don't spoil the fun, Stirling," pleaded little Ned Sawyer, a rare favorite with Bart. "We asked one-legged Dacy on the quiet. He was in the war, and he says the gun can't burst, or anything."

The crowd kept pushing Bart forward in eager excitement.

"Why don't you light it yourself?" inquired Bart of Dale.

"I've sprained my foot--limping now," explained young Wacker. "She may kick, you see, and soon as you light her you want to scoot."

"Go ahead, Bart! touch her off," implored little Sawyer, quivering with excitement.

"Whoop! hurrah!" yelled a frantic chorus as Bart took a voluntary step up the hill.

That decided him--patriotism was in the air and he was fully infected.

One or two of the larger boys advanced with him, but halted at a safe distance, while the younger ones danced about and stuck their fingers in their ears, screaming.

Bart got to the side of the cannon. It was silhouetted in the landscape on a slight slant towards the stately mansion and grounds of Colonel Harrington, in full view at all times of the magnate who had improved its surroundings.

Bart made out a long fuse trailing three feet or more over the side of the old fieldpiece. He blew the punk to a bright glow.

"Ready!" he called back merrily over his shoulder.

The hillside vibrated with the flutter of expectant juvenile humanity and a vast babel of half-suppressed excited voices.

Bart applied the punk, there was a fizz, a sharp hiss, a writhing worm of quick flame, and then came a fearful report that split the air like the crack of doom.

CHAPTER III

COUNTING THE COST

Bart had quickly moved to one side of the cannon after lighting the fuse, and was about twenty feet away when the explosion came.

The alarming echoes, the shock, flare and smoke combined to give him a terrific sensation.

The crowd that had retreated down the hill in delightful trepidation now came trooping back filled with a bolder excitement.

They had indeed "waked the natives," for gazing downhill against the lights of the street and stores at its base they could see people rushing outdoors in palpable agitation.

Some were staring up the hill in wonder and terror, others were starting for its summit, among them two village officials, as demonstrated by the silver stars they wore.

"They heard it--it woke 'em up, right enough!" shrieked little Sawyer in a frenzy of happiness.

"Look yonder!" piped a second breathless voice. "Say, I thought I heard something strike."

Dale Wacker came upon the scene--not limping, but chuckling and winking to the cronies at his back.

"Pretty good aim, eh, fellows?" he gloated. "Stirling, you're a capital gunner."

All eyes were now turned in a new direction--in that whither the muzzle of the cannon was pointed.

The grounds of the Harrington mansion were the scene of a vivid commotion. The porch lights had been abruptly turned on, and they flooded the lawn in front with radiance.

Bart gasped, thrilled, and experienced a strange qualm of dismay. He discerned in a flash that something heretofore always prominently present on the Harrington landscape was not now in evidence.

The wealthy colonel was given to "grandstand plays," and one of them had been the placing of a bronze pedestal and statue at the side of the driveway.

It bore the inscription "1812," and according to the colonel, portrayed a military man life-size, epaulettes, sword, uniform and all--his maternal grandfather as he had appeared in the battle scene where he had lost a limb.

Now, in effigy, the valiant warrior was prostrate. The colonel's servants were rushing to the spot where the statue had tumbled over on the velvety sward.

"See here!"--cried Bart stormingly, turning on Dale Wacker.

"Loaded," significantly observed the latter with a diabolical grin.

A rush of keen realization made Bart shiver. He recognized what the foolhardy escapade might have cost had that whirling cannon ball met a human, instead of an inanimate, target.

As it was, he easily calculated the indignation and resentment of the haughty village magnate who was given to outbursts of wrath which carried all before him.

"You've spoiled my Fourth," began Bart in a tumult. "I'll spoil your--"

"Cut for it, fellows! they're coming for us!"

"They" were the village officers. Bart had made a jump towards Dale Wacker, but the latter had faded into the vortex of pell-mell fugitives rushing away downhill to hiding.

Bart put after them, trying to single out the author of the scurvy joke that he knew had serious trouble at the end of it.

"Hold on!" gasped a breathless voice.

"Don't stop me!" shouted Bart, trying to tear loose from a frantic grip.

"Oh, it's you--what do you want?"

He halted to survey the person who detained him--the man who haunted the freight tracks--to whom he had given money earlier in the evening.

"Come, quick!" the man panted. "Express shed--where your father is--trouble. Don't wait--not a minute."

"See here," challenged Bart, instantly startled into a new tremor of anxiety, "what do you mean?"

But the forlorn roustabout could not be coherent. He continued to gasp and splutter out excited adjectives, fragmentary sentences.

"Plot--get you into trouble--father--I heard 'em."