CHAPTER IV.
When the Wolf was at the Door.
There had been a long stretch of dry weather, and we were cleaning out the waterhole.

Dad was down the hole shovelling up the dirt; Joe squatted on the brink catching flies and letting them go again without their wings--a favourite amusement of his; while Dan and Dave cut a drain to turn the water that ran off the ridge into the hole--when it rained.

Dad was feeling dry, and told Joe to fetch him a drink.
Joe said: "See first if this cove can fly with only one wing." Then he went, but returned and said: "There's no water in the bucket--Mother used the last drop to boil th' punkins," and renewed the fly-catching.
Dad tried to spit, and was going to say something when Mother, half-way between the house and the waterhole, cried out that the grass paddock was all on fire.

"So it is, Dad!" said Joe, slowly but surely dragging the head off a fly with finger and thumb.
Dad scrambled out of the hole and looked.

"Good God!" was all he said.
How he ran! All of us rushed after him except Joe--he could n't run very well, because the day before he had ridden fifteen miles on a poor horse, bare-back.