lls the string, and the water comes down," laughed
Jerry.

"Oh! I see now what you mean! It's going to rain!"

"Hear! hear. He's tumbled to it at last! Sometimes it seems to me that
we'll just have to get out a special dictionary for Will, so he can find
the answers to conundrums without waste of time or energy," declared
Bluff.

"That's the penalty every genius has to pay," remarked Will composedly.

Every now and then the boys were compelled to duck their heads beneath
the surface of the river, for the heat became unbearable. When the worst
of the fire had gone by on the wings of the furious wind, things began
to change a bit for the better.

"Say! don't you think we might be getting out of here now?" demanded
Will, whose teeth, strange to say, were rattling together with the chill
of the mountain stream even while the air was still heated around them.

"I suppose it will be safe, and we can stand the heat if it will assist
to dry our clothes. Though for that matter, fellows, it's ten to one we
will be soaked through and through again before we get to camp."

"This is mighty unhealthy, I think. Such rapid changes always encourage
dangerous ailments," remarked Will, whose father, now dead, had been a
physician.

"All the same, I know several fellows who were very much pleased to make
a sudden change a little while back," asserted Jerry.

They crawled out on the bank. Will, of course, made straight for the
rocky niche toward which he had cast many an anxious look while standing
in the river.

"Good! Everything is all right, boys! Not a bit of damage done, that I
can see!" he called out.

They kept close to the river in making their way along. Perhaps the main
idea in this was to have a handy refuge in case a sudden need arose.

"There she comes!" remarked Bluff, in less than ten minutes.

"What? Where?" asked Will, staring around.

A deep bellow of near-by thunder answered him. Then the rain began to
fall in torrents. Will always carried a piece of waterproof cloth, to be
used for wrapping around his precious camera on occasions when it was
threatened with rain. This he brought into use, and at the same time
tried to keep the little black box sheltered as much as possible under
his coat.

From one extreme they had jumped to the other. First it was a
superabundance of fire, and now water began to trouble them.

"I'm soaked through again," announced Jerry dolefully, as he allowed the
wind to carry him