k to the cabin at all,
and--ah--this gentleman saw me through the telescope and ran down
there and got me out of it. And right where I had been sitting on a
rock, the fire has burned just everything! And I wish you would get
word somehow to Miss Kate Humphrey, at Toll-Gate cabin, that Marion
Rose is all right and will be home just as soon as she can get down
there without burning her shoes. And--oh, will you please tell her
that I took the bread out of the oven before I left, and that it's
under the box the cream came in? I put it there to keep the bluejays
away from it till she woke up, and she may not know where to look....
Yes, thank you, I think that will be all.... But listen! This man up
here saved my life, though of course it is a pity he was not here to
answer the phone, every minute of the day. What I want to say is that
it was my fault, and I hope you'll please excuse me for having a life
that needed to be saved just when you called! I wouldn't for the
world.... Oh, don't mention it! I just didn't want you to blame him,
is all. Good-by."

She turned to Jack with a little frown. "People seem to think, just
because you work for a living, that your whole mission in life is to
take orders on the jump. It was that way at the Martha Washington, and
every other place I ever worked. That man down there seems to think
that your life begins and ends right here in this little glass box.
What made you apologize for keeping a telephone call waiting while you
went out and saved a perfectly good life? Men are the queerest
things!"

She went out and climbed upon the rock where Jack had lain watching
her, and set herself down as comfortably as possible, and stared at
the fire while Jack located on the chart the present extent of the
blazing area, and sent in his report. When he had finished he did not
go out to her immediately. He stood staring down the hill with his
eyebrows pinched together. Now and then he lifted his hand
unconsciously and pushed his heavy thatch of hair straight back from
his forehead, where it began at once to lie wavy as of old. He was
feeling again the personal sense of tragedy and loss in that fire;
cursing again his helplessness to check it or turn it aside from that
beautiful stretch of timber over toward Genessee.

Now the shadows had crept down the slope again to where the fire glow
beat them back while it crisped the balsam thicket. Behind him the
sun, sinking low over the crest of a far-off r