down several degrees. The freckles were
coming back. He was now coherent.

No he had not heard anything. He was sure nothing had come down the
wire. Just then the rapid-fire, steady clicking of the key changed
abruptly to the sharp, staccato insistence of a "call."

Jerry held up his hand. "Lowville calling Utica," he said. They waited
a little and then: "Call State Warden. Fire Beaver Run country. Call
everything," Jerry repeated from the sounder, punctuating for the
benefit of the Bishop.

"It must be big, Bishop," he said, turning, "or they wouldn't call--"

But the Bishop was already running for the steps of his departing
train.

At Lowville he left the train and hurried to Father Brady's house.
Finding the priest out on a call, he begged a hasty lunch from the
housekeeper, and, commandeering some riding clothes and Father Brady's
saddle horse, he was soon on the road to French Village and the
hills.

It was before the days of the rural telephone and there was no
telegraph up the hill road. A messenger had come down from the hills a
half hour ago to the telegraph office. But there was no alarm among
the people of Lowville, for there lay twenty miles of well cultivated
country between them and the hills. If they noticed Father Brady's
clothes riding furiously out toward the hill road, they gave the
matter no more than a mild wonder.

For twenty-two miles the Bishop rode steadily up the hard dirt road
over which he and Arsene LaComb had struggled in the beginning of the
winter before. He thought of Tom Lansing, who had died that night. He
thought of the many things that had in some way had their beginning on
that night, all leading up, more or less, to this present moment. But
more than all he thought of Jeffrey Lansing and other desperate men up
there in the hills fighting for their lives and their little all.

He did not know who had started this fire. It might well have started
accidentally. He did not know that the railroad people had sent men
into the hills to start it. But if they had, and if those men were
caught by the men of the hills, then there would be swift and bloody
justice done. The Bishop thought of this and he rode Father Brady's
horse as that good animal had never been ridden in the course of his
well fed life.

Nearing Corben's, he saw that the horse could go but little farther.
Registering a remonstrance to Father Brady, anent the matter of
keeping his horse too fat, he rode up to bar