ation of the
man's initiative.

This "foreigner," it seemed, was not so weak, was not so namby-pamby as
his class had been described to be. She did not struggle in the circling
arms, she only made an explanation.

"That's hard wood, burnin' there," said she. "Burnin' hard wood's harder
to break through an' hotter, too. Try some place where it's pine.... But
you can't never do it!"

"Where?" said he. "Show me! You know, I don't."

"Well--over thar," she said, and indicated, with a pointing hand, the
place in the encircling conflagration where passage seemed least
hopeless.

At that moment fire blazed high there, but her knowing eye told her that
it was largely flaring needles, brittle twigs, and easily dissipated
cones which fed it.

A few great springs, such as she now felt that the quivering, eager
limbs which held her, were possessed of the ability to make, might take
them through this flimsiest spot in the terrible barricade. The
crackling, burning branches of the dead pine-tops would be likely to
give way before them, not to trip them up, as oak would, to thrust them,
falling, on the bed of glowing coals fast forming on the ground.

"Over thar," said she, again. "I reckon that's the best place--but you
cain't--"

With the new respect the knowledge of his trained and ready muscles
brought to her, arose in her a towering admiration of him. When she
first had seen him, there beside the pool, she definitely had liked him;
while they had delved into the mysteries of the alphabet upon the log
his patient, willing, helpful kindness had increased her prepossession
in his favor. It was only when, after disaster had so swiftly, so
unexpectedly, descended on them and she had compared his body, made
apparently more slender in comparison to the rude-limbed mountaineers
she knew than it was really by tight-fitting knickerbockers and
golf-stockings and its well-cut shooting-jacket, that she had lost
confidence in him. But now his muscles, closing round her, seemed like
thews of steel. She had never heard of athletes, she did not dream that
muscle-building is a part of modern education--that alertness on the
baseball, polo, football fields, count quite as much, at least in
college popularity, as ready tongues and agile wits. The last fibres of
destroyed respect for him rebuilt themselves upon the minute. Her
confidence returned completely in a sudden flash--quicker than the magic
leapings of the fire about them. She knew