oup of persons from stores and homes. Methodically it went round the
circle of shops, the most rapacious customer the town had ever seen.
Quarters of beeves in the meat shop, bottles of liquids and powders on
the drug-store shelves, barrels and boxes of food in the grocery store,
suits of clothing in Abe Cohen's, the leather whips and carriage robes
in the hardware store, all went down its gullet with the most amazing
ease.

Swelled with its indiscriminate meal, it started hesitantly on its way
up the street that led to the Presbyterian Church. Now people lost their
heads and ran hither and thither, screaming and praying incoherently,
dragging their crying children about from one place to another, pumping
water frantically to offer it, an impotent libation to an insatiable
god. They knew that neither the beating of brooms nor the water from
their wells could quench the enemy that was upon them. Red Judgment Day
was at hand.

Meanwhile a peculiar thing happened. The Life that was hanging above the
town lifted itself up, high up, entire in its pattern, beyond the reach
of red tongues, of gusts from hot gullets--and there it stayed while the
enemy raged below.

Dave Fellows harangued the men who were beating away vainly, pouring
buckets of water on unquenchable tongues. He pointed to the forest up
the street back of the Presbyterian Church. He was telling them that the
only thing to do was to call forth another enemy to come down and do
battle with this one before it reached the church. "Yes, yes," they
chorused eagerly.

Craftily they edged around south of the enemy, scorching their faces
against its streaming flank, and ran swiftly far up the line of forest
past the church. There it was even at that moment that Helen Barton was
begging Daly to remember his promise and take her with him on the
evening train....

The men scooped up leaves and small twigs and bending over invoked their
champion to come forth and do battle for them. Presently it came forth,
shooting out little eager red tongues that danced and leaped, glad to be
coming forth, growing larger in leaps and bounds. Dave Fellows watched
anxiously the direction in which the hissing tongues sprang. "The wind
will take it," he said at last. Fitfully the breeze pressed up against
the back of the newly born, pushing more and more strongly as the
tongues sprang higher and higher, until finally it swept the full-grown
monster down the track towards where the other