"Chasing you, Tom," laughed the girl. "Is it going to rain?"

"I reckon. You'll get wet if it does."

"I don't care so much for that," confessed Nan. "But I am so afraid of
thunder! Oh, there it comes."

The tempest muttered in the distance. Tom, who had pulled in his horses
and stopped, looked worried. "I wish you weren't here, Nan," he said.

"How gallant you are, I declare, Tommy Sherwood," cried Nan, laughing
again, and then shuddering as the growl of the thunder was repeated.

"Swamp's no place for a girl in a storm," muttered the boy.

"Well, I am here, Tommy; what are you going to do with me?" she asked
him, saucily.

"If you're so scared by thunder you'd better begin by stopping your
ears," he drawled.

Nan laughed. Slow Tom was not often good at repartee. "I'm going to
stick by you till it's over, Tom," she said, hopping up behind him on
the wagon-tongue.

"Cracky, Nan! You'll get soaked. It's going to just smoke in a few
minutes," declared the anxious young fellow.

And that reminded Nan again of the smoking tree.

"Oh, Tom! Do you know I believe there is a tree afire over yonder," she
cried, pointing.

"A tree afire?"

"Yes. I saw it smoking."

"My mercy me!" exclaimed Tom again. "What do you mean?"

Nan told him about the mystery. The fact that a column of smoke arose
out of the top of the dead tree seemed to worry Tom. Nan became alarmed.

"Oh, dear, Tom! Do you really think it was afire?"

"I, don't know. If it was afire, it is afire now," he said. "Show me,
Nan."

He turned the horses out of the beaten track through the brush and
brambles, to the edge of the open place which had been heaped with
sawdust from the steam-mill.

Just as they broke cover a vivid flash of lightning cleaved the black
cloud that had almost reached the zenith by now, and the deep rumble of
thunder changed to a sharp chatter; then followed a second flash and a
deafening crash.

"Oh, Tom!" gasped Nan, as she clung to him.

"The flash you see'll never hit you, Nan," drawled Tom, trying to be
comforting. "Remember that."

"It isn't so much the lightning I fear as it is the thunder," murmured
Nan, in the intermission. "It just so-o-ounds as though the whole house
was coming down."

"Ho!" cried Tom. "No house here, Nan."

"But-----"

The thunder roared again. A light patter on the leaves and ground
announced the first drops of the storm.

"Which tree was it you saw smoking?" asked the young fellow.