gravely at him as he moved about investigating, not
excitedly, alertly, full of the necessary business of escape. "Looks
bad, don't it?" she said gravely. "Like powder, them thar pine-tops."

"Oh, we'll get out all right," he answered, easily, and now she felt a
comfort in the fact that he was intentionally minimizing danger to give
confidence to the supposed weakness of her sex.

"Maybe so an' maybe not," said she, discovering, to her disgust, that it
was hard, now that he was showing strength, to keep the panic tremolo
from her own voice.

The fire had, by this time, encircled them completely, and from a
hundred points was running in toward them on tinder lines of dry
pine-needles and old leaves, flashing at them viciously along the crisp,
dry surface of old moss and lichens on the rocks. A wind had suddenly
arisen, born, no doubt, of the fire's own mighty draft. Bits of blazing
light wood, small, burning branches, myriads of flaming oak leaves and
pine-cones were swept up from the ring of fire about them, in the
chimney of the blaze, to lose their impetus only at a mighty height, and
then fall slowly, threateningly down within the burning ring. So
plentiful were these little, vicious menaces, that, within another
minute, they were dodging them continually.

He now took his place close by her side and gazed upon the spectacle,
calm-eyed, as if he found it interesting rather more than terrifying.

"Oh, we'll get out, all right," said he, again.

And then he turned to her in frank and unexcited inquiry. To her
increased disgust the sobs of growing fear convulsed her throat. She
fought them back and listened to his question.

"You know more about woods-fires than I do," he said evenly. "Better
tell me what to do, eh?"

This confession of his ignorance strengthened her growing confidence in
him instead of weakening it. The fact that he could ask advice so calmly
made her think that, probably, he would be calm in taking it if she
could offer it. It steadied her and helped her think. And then she saw
him spring, and, actually with a smile, strike in the air above her
head, diverting from its downward path which would have landed it upon
her, a flaming fragment of pine-top fully five feet long. He actually
laughed.

"Like handball," he said cheerily. "Don't worry. I won't let anything
fall on you. You just--_think!_"

Her panic, now, had vanished as by magic. Instantly she really _ceased_
to worry. He would _not