it.

But, after sunset, the smoke became too pervasive to be ignored longer.
It was not only stinging his throat and lungs, but it was making his
eyes smart. And it had cut off the view of all save the nearer
mountain-peaks.

Lad got to his feet; whining softly, under his breath. Ancestral
instinct was fairly shouting to his brain that here was terrible peril.
He strained at his thick rope; and looked imploringly down the
wagon-road.

The wind had swelled into something like a gale. And, now, to Lad's
keen ears came the far-off snap and crack of a million dry twigs as the
flame kissed them in its fast-crawling advance. This sharper sound rose
and fell, as a theme to the endless and slowly-augmenting roar which
had been perceptible for hours.

Again, Laddie strained at his heavy rope. Again, his smoke-stung eyes
explored the winding trail down the mountain. No longer was the trail
so distinguishable as before. Not only by reason of darkness, but
because from that direction came the bulk of the eddying gusts of
wind-driven smoke.

The fire's mounting course was paralleling the trail; checked from
crossing it only by a streambed and an outcrop of granite which
zigzagged upward from the valley. The darkness served also to tinge the
lowering sky to south and to westward with a steadily brightening lurid
glare. The Master had been right in his glum prophecy that a strong and
sudden shift of wind would carry the conflagration through the
tinder-dry undergrowth and dead trees of that side of the mountain, far
faster than any body of fire-fighters could hope to check it.

The flame-reflection began to light the open spaces below the knoll,
with increasing vividness. The chill of early evening was counteracted
waves of sullen heat, which the wind sent swirling before it.

Lad panted; from warmth as much as from nervousness. He had gone all
day without water. And a collie, more perhaps than any other dog, needs
plenty of fresh, cool water to drink; at any and all times. The hot
wind and the smoke were parching his throat. His thirst was intolerable.

Behind him, not very many yards away, was the ice-cold mountain lakelet
in which so often he had bathed and drunk. The thought of it made him
hate the stout rope.

But he made no serious effort to free himself. He had been tied
there,--supposedly by the Master's command. And, as a well-trained dog,
it was his place to stay where he was, until the Master should free
him. So