ness on her pretty face, now showing
signs of the terrible strain that they were undergoing. Bud thought of
his position as her protector and gnashed his teeth in the bitterness of
his soul as he contemplated his utter helplessness. Hot tears coursed
down his cheeks and, dropping on Foresta's face, awakened her.

Foresta, who had been having troubled dreams, quickly lifted her head
from Bud's lap and looked about in terror. Turning toward him she saw
his eyes reddened from weeping. She threw herself on his shoulder and
the two now gave way to their feelings for the first time.

"We have one consolation, Bud. They can't destroy our love for one
another, can they?" said Foresta.

Bud was too full of sorrow at the plight of the wife of his bosom to
reply. A deep groan of anguish escaped his lips. He leaned back against
the log, Foresta still clinging to his neck. After a while both of them
from sheer exhaustion fell asleep.

CHAPTER XX.

_The Blaze._

Little Melville Brant stamped his foot on the floor, looked defiantly at
his mother, and said, in the whining tone of a nine-year old child,

"Mother, I want to go."

"Melville, I have told you this dozen times that you cannot go,"
responded the mother with a positiveness that caused the boy to feel
that his chances were slim.

"You are always telling me to keep ahead of the other boys, and I can't
even get up to some of them," whined Melville plaintively.

"What do you mean?" asked the mother.

"Ben Stringer is always a crowing over me. Every time I tell anything
big he jumps in and tells what he's seen, and that knocks me out. He has
seen a whole lots of lynchings. His papa takes him. I bet if my papa was
living he would take me," said Melville.

"My boy, listen to your mother," said Mrs. Brant. "Nothing but bad
people take part in or go to see those things. I want mother's boy to
scorn such things, to be way above them."

"Well, I ain't. I want to see it. Ben Stringer ain't got no business
being ahead of me," Melville said with vigor.

The shrieking of the train whistle caused the fever of interest to rise
in the little boy.

"There's the train now, mother. Do let me go. I ain't never seen a darky
burned."

"Burned!" exclaimed Mrs. Brant in horror.

Melville looked up at his mother as if pitying her ignorance.

"They are going to burn them. Sed Lonly heard his papa and Mr. Corkle
talking about it, and it's all fixed up."

"My Heavenly Fathe