ith that same
genuineness of gesture, graceful and appealing, which he had seen in all
her movements from the first and then clasped them at her breast.

"But oh," said she, "somehow, I want to learn, now, terrible!"

"Let me help you while I'm in the mountains," he replied, impulsively.
"I'll be glad to help you every day."

"Would you?" she said. "I would be powerful thankful!" Her bright eyes
expressed the gratitude she felt.

While they had talked a strange paradox had come about there by the fire
without their notice. The long, black outcropping of rock against which
they had brought the old man's blaze to life, had, instead of keeping
the fire from spreading to the undergrowth, strangely permitted it to
pass.

It was the girl who first discovered this. She sprang up from her place
with a startled exclamation.

"Oh," said she, "th' fire is spreadin'!"

He rose quickly to his feet.

CHAPTER III

They were appalled by the predicament in which they found themselves.
The thing seemed quite mysterious.

The rock against which the fire had been built was all aglow, as if it
had been heated in a furnace till red hot--strange circumstance; one
that would have fascinated Layson into elaborate investigation had he
had the time to think about it--and, beyond it, evidently communicated
through it as a link, the rustling leaves of the past autumn, their
surface layers sun-dried, were bursting into glittering little points of
flame all about the narrow ledge of rock on which they were standing. As
they gazed, before Layson could rush forward to stamp out these
sparkling perils, the fire had spread, as the girl, wise in the direful
ways of brush-fires, had known at once that it would spread, to the
encircling pine-tops, left in a tinder barricade about the clearing by
the sawyers and the axemen.

"Oh," she said, distressed, "we're ketched!"

Layson, less conscious of their peril because less well informed as to
the almost explosive inflammability of dry pine-tops, took the matter
less seriously. "We'll get out, all right," said he. "Don't worry."

"There's times _to_ worry," said the girl, "an' this, I reckon--well,
it's one of 'em."

As if to prove the truth of what she said, with a burst almost like that
of flame's leap along a powder-line, the fire caught one resinous
pine-top after another with a crackling rush which was not only
fearfully apparent to the eye, but also ominously audible. Within ten