ll of fire or working along down beside
it. But while they fought the fire they would be hunting the brush and
the smoke for the traces of other men. Those other men would maybe be
trapped by the swift running of the fire. All might be driven to seek
safety together. The hunted men would flee from the fire to a death
just as certain but which they would prefer to face.

The Bishop was riding to save the lives of those men. Also he was
riding to keep the men of the hills from murder. Jeffrey would be
among them. Only yesterday she had spoken that word to him.

But he can do neither, she thought. He will be caught on the road, and
before he will give in and turn back he will be trapped.

"I am going back to the top of the hill," she said suddenly to Mrs.
Whiting. "I want to see what it looks like now. Go on down. I will
catch you before long."

"No. We will pull in at the side of the road here and wait for you.
Don't go past the hill. We'll wait. There's no danger down here yet,
and won't be for some time."

Brom Bones made short work of the hill, for he was fresh and all day
long he had been held in tight when he had wanted to run away. He did
not know what that thing was from which he had all day been wanting to
run. But he knew that if he had been his own master he would have run
very far, hunting water. So now he bolted quickly to the top of the
hill.

But the Bishop, too, was riding a fresh horse and was not sparing him.
When Ruth came to the top of the hill she saw the Bishop nearly a mile
away, already past her own home and mounting the long hill.

She stood watching him, undecided what to do. The chances were all
against him. Perhaps he did not understand how certainly those chances
stood against him. And yet, he looked and rode like a man who knew the
chances and was ready to measure himself against them.

"Brom Bones could catch him, I think," she said as she watched him up
the long hill. "But we could not make him come back until it was too
late. I wonder if I am afraid to try. No, I don't think I'm afraid.
Only somehow he seems--seems different. He doesn't seem just like a
man that was reckless or ignorant of his danger. No. He knows all
about it. But it doesn't count. He is a man going on business--God's
business. I wonder."

Now she saw him against the rim of the sky as he went over the brow of
the hill, where Jeffrey and she had stopped yesterday. He was not a
pretty figure of a rider. He rode st