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'It's gone eight, replied Sylvia. 'But our clock is better nor an hour forrard, answered Bell. 'Ay, but t' wind brings Monkshaven bells clear to-night. I heerd t' eight o'clock bell ringing not five minutes ago. It was the fire-bell, but she had not distinguished the sound. There was another long silence; both wide awake this time. 'He'll have his rheumatics again, said Bell.
The fire-bell was kept in the market-house where High Street and Bridge Street met: every one knew what it meant. Some dwelling, or maybe a boiling-house was on fire, and neighbourly assistance was summoned with all speed, in a town where no water was laid on, nor fire-engines kept in readiness.
The auto slips its clutch, and the engine begins to clang and clatter, and somebody off behind a red-hot mountain in the distance begins ringing an enormous bell just as you slide downward into a crater of flame and then you wake up entirely, and the fire-bell is going "clang-clang-clang-clang-clang," while below you hear the ringing crunch of your neighbor's feet on the cold snow, and outside the north window there is a red glare which may be either the end of the world or another exploded lamp in 'Bige Brinton's chicken-incubator; you won't know which until you have stabbed both feet into one pants-leg, crawled all over the cold floor for a missing sock, and run half a mile, double-reefing your nightshirt to keep it from trailing out from under your overcoat.
The Old Guard formed a square for the emperor and his officers, and the rest of us simply straggled away, back to France. The most awful thing of all was the beating of the drum of the Old Guard in that hour of disaster. It was like a fire-bell, the last appeal of a burning nation. Buche was by my side in the retreat. Several times the Prussians attacked us.
He had scarcely reached the end of the street, however, when a man turned the corner at full speed and ran him down ran him down so completely that he sent him head-over-heels into the kennel, and, passing on, darted at the fire-bell of the station, which he began to pull violently.
One night it was on a Saturday, February 23rd, when there was a bitter black frost, with a north-east wind sweeping through the streets, and men and women were close shut in their houses all were startled in their household content and warmth by the sound of the fire-bell busily swinging, and pealing out for help.
I don't know why I drove that trotter to-day, nor why I went on that sulky, for I couldn't hear good where I was, on the outskirts of the meeting; but I done it like as if the Lord had told me. The Chief spotted me soon as the fire-bell rung. In a second he bundled me off, straddled the sulky, and was away 'fore you could say snakes." "I don't believe he's strong enough for all this.
But it was beneath his dignity to run to fires. When the fire-bell rang, he waited nonchalantly on the corner near the fire-department house, and as the crowds parted to let the horses dash by on the dead run, he would walk calmly to the middle of the street, put his notebook in his pocket, and, as the fire-team plunged by, he would ostentatiously throw out a stiff leg behind him like the tail of a comet, and "flip" onto the end of the fire-waggon.
'The gang! the gang! shrieked out some one. 'The gang are upon us! Help! help! Then the fire-bell had been a decoy; a sort of seething the kid in its mother's milk, leading men into a snare through their kindliest feelings.
Without hat or coat, with his shirt-sleeves torn by those unfortunates into whose arms he had wildly rushed, with his hair streaming backwards, his eyes blood-shot, his face pale as marble, and perspiration running down his cheeks, not even his own most intimate friends would have recognised Hopkins the staid, softspoken, polite, and gentle Hopkins had they seen him that night pulling like a maniac at the fire-bell.
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