at sprinkled them--"hear me! If you value your life, if you
value your soul, and if you do not want me to cast you to the beasts
like Jezebel of old, never--never take that accursed name again upon
your lips. Seek her--HER? Yes! Seek her to tie her like a witch's
daughter of hell to that blazing tree!" He stopped. "Forgive me," he
said in a changed voice. "I'm mad, and forgetting myself and you. Come."

Without noticing the expression of half-savage delight that had passed
across her face, he lifted her in his arms.

"Which way are you going?" she asked, passing her hands vaguely across
his breast, as if to reassure herself of his identity.

"To our camp by the scarred tree," he replied.

"Not there, not there," she said, hurriedly. "I was driven from there
just now. I thought the fire began there until I came here."

Then it was as he feared. Obeying the same mysterious law that had
launched this fatal fire like a thunderbolt from the burning mountain
crest five miles away into the heart of the Carquinez Woods, it had
again leaped a mile beyond, and was hemming them between two narrowing
lines of fire. But Low was not daunted. Retracing his steps through
the blinding smoke, he strode off at right angles to the trail near the
point where he had entered the wood. It was the spot where he had first
lifted Nellie in his arms to carry her to the hidden spring. If any
recollection of it crossed his mind at that moment, it was only shown in
his redoubled energy. He did not glide through the thick underbrush, as
on that day, but seemed to take a savage pleasure in breaking through it
with sheer brute force. Once Teresa insisted upon relieving him of
the burden of her weight, but after a few steps she staggered blindly
against him, and would fain have recourse once more to his strong arms.
And so, alternately staggering, bending, crouching, or bounding and
crashing on, but always in one direction, they burst through the jealous
rampart, and came upon the sylvan haunt of the hidden spring. The
great angle of the half-fallen tree acted as a harrier to the wind and
drifting smoke, and the cool spring sparkled and bubbled in the almost
translucent air. He laid her down beside the water, and bathed her
face and hands. As he did so his quick eye caught sight of a woman's
handkerchief lying at the foot of the disrupted root. Dropping Teresa's
hand, he walked towards it, and with the toe of his moccasin gave it one
vigorous kick in