was Joy. She lay
perfectly still.

A horrible fear came over Gypsy. She crept up on her hands and knees,
trying to see her lace through the dark, and just then Joy moaned
faintly. Gypsy's heart gave a great thump. In that moment, in the moment
of that horrible fear and that great relief, Gypsy knew for the first
time that she loved Joy, and how much.

"It's my ankle," moaned Joy; "it must be broken--I know it's broken."

It was not broken, but very badly sprained.

"Can you stand on it?" asked Gypsy, her face almost as pale as Joy's.

Joy tried to get to her feet, but fell heavily, with a cry of pain.

Gypsy looked around her with dismay. Above, the ten feet of rock shot
steeply; across the gully towered a high, dark wall; at each end,
shelving stones were piled upon each other. They had fallen into a sort
of unroofed cave,--a hollow, shut in completely and impassably.
Impassably to Joy; there could be no doubt about that. To leave her
there alone was out of the question. There was but one thing to be done;
there was no alternative.

"We must stay here all night," said Gypsy, slowly. She had scarcely
finished her sentence when she sprang up, her lips parted and white.

"Joy, see, see! what is that?"

"What? Where?" asked Joy between her sobs.

"There! _isn't that smoke_?"

A distinct, crackling sound answered her, as of something fiercely
licking up the dead leaves and twigs,--a fearful sound to hear in a
great forest. At the same instant a white cloud of smoke puffed down
almost into their faces. Before they had time to stir or cry out, a
great jet of yellow flame shot up on the edge of the cliff, glared far
into the shadow of the forest, lighted up the ravine with an awful
brightness.

_The mountain was on fire._

Gypsy sat for the instant without speaking or moving. She seemed to
herself to have no words to say, no power of motion. She knew far better
than Joy what those five words meant. A dim remembrance came to
her--and it was horrible that it should come to her just then--of
something she had seen when she was a very little girl, and never
forgotten, and never would forget. A mountain burning for weeks, and a
woman lost on it; all the town turned out in an agony of search; the
fires out one day, and a slow procession winding down the blank, charred
slope, bearing something closely covered, that no one looked upon.

She sprang up in an agony of terror.

"Oh, Joy, _can't_ you walk? We shall die