APTER III

THE WORK OF THE FIRE

At Cranford began the road which the Camp Fire Girls were to follow
through Indian Notch, the gap between the two big mountains, Mount Grant
and Mount Sherman. Then they were to travel easily toward the seashore,
since the Manasquan Camp Fire, ever since it had been organized, had
spent a certain length of time each summer by the sea.

The Village of Cranford had been saved from the fire only by a shift of
the wind. The woods to the west and the north had been burning briskly
for several days, and every able-bodied man in the village had been out,
day and night, with little food and less rest, trying to turn off the
fire. In spite of all their efforts, however, they would have failed in
their task if the change in the weather had not come to their aid. As a
consequence, everyone in the village, naturally enough, was still
talking about the fire.

"It isn't often that a village in this part of the country has such a
narrow escape," said Eleanor, looking around, "See, girls, you can see
for yourselves how close they were to having to turn and run from the
fire."

"It looks as if some of the houses here had actually been on fire," said
Dolly, as they passed into the outskirts of the village.

"I expect they were. You see, the wind was very high just before the
shift came, and it would carry sparks and blazing branches. It's been a
very hot, dry summer, too, and so all the wooden houses were ready to
catch fire. The paint was dry and blistered. They probably had to watch
these houses very carefully, to be ready to put out a fire the minute it
started."

"It didn't look so bad from our side of the lake, though, did it?"

"The smoke hid the things that were really dangerous from us, but here
they could see all right. I'll bet that before another summer comes
around they'll be in a position to laugh at a fire."

"How do you mean? Is there anything they can do to protect
themselves--before a fire starts, I mean?"

"That's the time to protect themselves. When people wait until the fire
has actually begun to burn, it's almost impossible for them to check it.
It would have been this time, if the wind had blown for a few hours
longer the way it was doing when the fire started."

"But what can they do?"

"They can have a cleared space between the town and the forest, for one
thing, with a lot of brush growing there, if they want to keep that.
Then, if a fire starts, they can set the