His quick eye saw that the stack was doomed.  What troubled him more than that was the imminent danger to half-a-dozen other stacks nearly adjoining it.

“All Farmer Dale’s hay!” gasped the perturbed lad.  “Fifty tons, if there’s one.  If all that goes, what shall I do?”

Andy took in the whole situation with a vivid glance.  Then he made a bee-line dash for a broken stack against which rested a large field rake.

It was broad and had a very long handle.  Andy ran with it towards the blazing heap of hay and set to work instantly.

“This won’t do,” he breathed excitedly, as an effort to beat out the spreading flames only caused burning shreds to fill the air.  These threatened to ignite the contiguous stacks.

Once the first of these was started they would all go one after the other.  They were out of the direct draught of the light breeze prevailing.  What cinders arose went straight up high in the air.  The main danger threatened from the stubble.

Creeping into this from the base of the haystack in flames, little pathways of fire darted out like vicious serpents.

Andy made for these with the rake.  He beat at them and scraped the ground.  He stamped with his stockinged feet and pulled up clumps of stubble with his hands.

The trouble was that so many little fires started up at so many different spots.  Finally, however, the ground was a mass of burned-out grass for twenty feet clear around the centre of the blaze.

The haystack was sinking down a glowing mass, but now confined itself and past spreading out.

Andy flung himself on the ground fairly exhausted.  His hands and face were somewhat blistered, and he was wringing wet with perspiration.

He looked pretty serious as he did “a sum out of school.”

“That stack held about two tons and a-half,” he calculated.  “I heard a farmer at the post-office say yesterday that he was getting eight dollars in the stack for hay.  There’s twenty dollars gone up in smoke.  Where will I ever get twenty dollars?”

Andy became more and more despondent the longer he thought of the dismal situation.

He stirred himself to action.  With the rake he heaped together the brittle filaments of burned hay.

“It can’t spread any now,” he decided finally.  “It’s dying down to nothing.  Now then, what’s next?”

Andy took a far look in all directions.  The fire had burned so rapidly and clear in the crisp light air that it did not seem to have been observed in the village.

Andy wondered, however, that some of the Dales had not discovered it.  He stood gazing thoughtfully at the Dale homestead about a quarter-of-a-mile away.

A great many impulsive, disheartening and also reckless projects ran through his mind.

“It’s an awful fix to be in,” ruminated Andy with a sigh of real distress.  “If ever it was up to a fellow to cut stick and run, it’s up to Andy Wildwood at this minute.  Expelled from school, burning up a man’s haystack and then—­Aunt Lavinia!  The rest is bad enough, but when I think of her it sends the cold chills all over me.  Ugh!”