ubled way. Once, twice she opened
her lips to speak. But she did not know what to say or how to say it.
Finally she began:

"Bishop, I--I heard--"

"No, child. You heard nothing," the Bishop interrupted quietly,
"nothing."

Ruth understood. And for a little space the two stood there looking
down. The dead man's secret lay between them, buried under God's awful
seal.

The Bishop went to his horse and unstrapping Father Brady's storm coat
which he had brought wrapped it gently over the head and body of the
dead man as a protection from the showers of glowing cinders that
rained down upon everything.

Then they took up the interminable vigil of the night, standing at
their horses' heads, their faces buried in the manes, their arms
thrown over the horses' eyes.

As the night wore on the fire, having consumed everything to the east
and south, moved on deliberately into the west and north. But the
sharp, acrid smoke of trees left smouldering behind still kept them
in exquisite, blinded torture.

The murky, grey pall of the night turned almost to black as the fires
to the east died almost out in that last, lifeless hour of the night.
The light of the morning showed a faint, sickly white through the
smoke banks on the high hills. When it was time for the sun to be
rising over Bald Mountain, the morning breezes came down lifting the
heavy clouds of smoke and carrying them overhead and away into the
west. They saw the world again, a grey, ash-strewn world, with not a
land-mark left but the bare knobs of the hills and here and there a
great tree still standing smoking like a burnt-out torch.

They mounted wearily, and taking a last look at the figure of the man
lying there on his rocky bier, picked their way down to the sloping
hillside. The Gaunt Rocks had saved their lives. Now they must reach
Little Tupper and water if they would have their horses live.
Intolerable, frightful thirst was already swelling their own lips and
they knew that the plight of the horses was inevitably worse.

Ruth took the lead, for she knew the country. They must travel
circuitously, avoiding the places that had been wooded for the fallen
trees would still be burning and would block them everywhere. The road
was impossible because it had largely run through wooded places and
the trees would have fallen across it. Their situation was not
desperate, but at any moment a horse might drop or turn mad for
water.

For two hours they plodded ste