had not only run the car like a demon, but had
formed a plan. Slackening speed only long enough to waltz with the car
on a street-corner while she shouted an inquiry to a passer-by, she
followed the wave of his hand and flashed down a side-street to a
big brick building which proclaimed itself in a great sign, "Peabody
Brush-back Factory."

The car stopped. Molly sprang out and ran as though the car were a
rifle and she the bullet emerging from it. She ran into a large, ugly,
comfortable office, where several white-faced girls were lifting their
thin little fingers from typewriter keys to stare at the young woman
who burst through and in at a door marked "Manager."

"There's a fire on the mountain--a great fire in Hewitt's pine woods,"
she cried in a clear, peremptory voice that sounded like a young
captain leading a charge. "I can take nine men on my car. Will you
come with me and tell which men to go?"

A dignified, elderly man, with smooth, gray hair and a black alpaca
office coat, sat perfectly motionless behind his desk and stared at
her in a petrified silence. Molly stamped her foot. "There's not an
instant to lose," she said; "they need every man they can get."

"Who's the fire-warden of this township?" said the elderly man
foolishly, trying to assemble his wits.

Molly appeared visibly to propel him from his chair by her fury. "Oh,
they need help _NOW_!" she cried. "Come on! Come on!"

Then they stood together on the steps of the office. "Those men
unloading lumber over there could go," said the manager, "and I'll get
three more from the packing-rooms."

"Don't go yourself! Send somebody to get them!" commanded Molly. "You
go and telephone anybody in town who has a car. There'll be sure to be
one or two at the garage."

Sylvia gasped at the prodigy taking place before her eyes, the
masterful, keen-witted captain of men who emerged like a thunderbolt
from their Molly--Molly, the pretty little beauty of the summer
colony!

She had galvanized the elderly New Englander beside her out of his
first momentary apathy of stupefaction. He now put his own competent
hand to the helm and took command.

"Yes," he said, and with the word it was evident that he was aroused.
Over his shoulder, in a quiet voice that carried like the crack of a
gun: "Henderson, go get three men from the packing-room to go to a
forest-fire. Shut down the machinery. Get all the able-bodied men
ready in gangs of seven. Perkins, you 'phon