seated herself at the sewing machine
and was busily running up the seams of Ralph's new kilt.

"Yes; that's the time. It was before you came here. And the fire was
set in the way I spoke of. A couple of young men--they weren't much
more than boys--came up from town, and they were just at that age when
they thought it a smart thing to be able to smoke a cigar without
turning sick after it. They were staying at the hotel, and one day
they went with a party from there up to see the marble quarries.
There'd been an awful dry spell; it had lasted for weeks, and
everything was just as dry as touch-wood. There were notices posted
all along the roads and trails, forbidding folks building camp-fires,
or anything of that kind. The boys, after they had been to the
quarries, started home ahead of the others, and on foot. I don't
reckon that they'd got above a quarter of a mile from the quarries
when they pulled out some cigars and matches, intending, of course, to
have a smoke. Well, they had it, but it wasn't just the kind they'd
expected. First one, then the other, threw down their lighted matches,
after they'd got their cigars to going. The wind was blowing hard in
their faces and toward the quarry, as it happened, and the next thing
they knew they heard a great roaring, and as they said afterward, two
pillars of flame seemed to spring right out of the ground, one on
either side of the trail, and to reach so high that they almost
touched the tree-tops. In less time than I'm taking in telling of it
they had reached the tree-tops, and then the two little pillars of
fire became a great blazing ocean of fire up in mid-air. You know how
'tis with pine needles and cones; they make a blaze as if the end of
the world had come. No wonder the poor boys were scared! It was right
in the thickest part of the woods, and what with the fire roaring away
before the wind on either side of them, and the clouds of smoke and
sparks roaring away above the burning tree-tops, it must have been an
awful sight. They were in no particular danger themselves, because the
fire was going away from them, but as they stood there, blistering in
the heat, they thought of their parents--their parents, who were right
in the path of the flames, and in the way they acted up to that
thought, you may see the difference in folks. One of them--Dick Adams,
his name was--pulled his hat down over his eyes, shook out his
handkerchief and tied it over his mouth to save his l