CHAPTER XV. 

AN UNEXPECTED ARRIVAL. 

It was really the princess who saved aunt Dorcas's home from destruction. Had she not seen Dan Fernald, as he made his way through the orchard, the barn would most likely have been in a blaze before Joe or Plums were aware of the fact. 

Thanks to her warning, Joe saw the smoke before the fire gathered headway, and when he arrived on the scene, the flames had but just fastened upon the side of the barn. 

Plums, aroused to something like activity by the knowledge of danger, followed Joe with remarkable promptness, and the amount of water thus brought by both was sufficient to extinguish what, a few moments later, would have been a conflagration. 

Not until he had pulled the charred sticks from beneath the end of the barn, and assured himself every spark had been drowned out, did Joe speak, and then it was to relieve his mind by making threats against the would-be incendiary. 

"It's all well enough for a woman like aunt Dorcas to tell about doin' good to them what tries to hurt you, for she couldn't so much as put up her hands. If you keep on forgivin' duffers like Dan Fernald, you're bound to be in such scrapes as this all the time. What he needed was a sound thumpin', when he begun talkin' so rough to aunt Dorcas; then he wouldn't dared to try a game of this kind. When I get hold of him again, I'll make up for lost time." 
What would it have been if they would't extinguish it?
a conflagration