ead run. Burleson came pounding
along behind, amused, interested at this new caprice. She drew bridle at
the edge of the birches, half turned in her saddle, bidding him follow
with a gesture, and rode straight into the covert, now bending to avoid
branches, now pushing intrusive limbs aside with both gloved hands.

Out of the low bush pines, heirs of the white birches' heritage, rabbits
hopped away; sometimes a cock grouse, running like a rat, fled, crested
head erect; twice twittering woodcock whirred upward, beating wings
tangled for a moment in the birches, fluttering like great moths caught
in a net.

And now they had waded through the silver-birches which fringed the
pines as foam fringes a green sea; and before them towered the tall
timber, illuminated by the sun.

In the transparent green shadows they drew bridle; she leaned forward,
clearing the thick tendrils of hair from her forehead, and sat
stock-still, intent, every exquisite line and contour in full relief
against the pines.

At first he thought she was listening, nerves keyed to sense sounds
inaudible to him. Then, as he sat, fascinated, scarcely breathing lest
the enchantment break, leaving him alone in the forest with the memory
of a dream, a faint aromatic odor seemed to grow in the air; not the
close scent of the pines, but something less subtle.

"Smoke!" he said, aloud.

She touched her mare forward, riding into the wind, delicate nostrils
dilated; and he followed over the soundless cushion of brown needles,
down aisles flanked by pillared pines whose crests swam in the upper
breezes, filling all the forest with harmony.

And here, deep in the splendid forest, there was fire,--at first nothing
but a thin, serpentine trail of ashes through moss and bedded needles;
then, scarcely six inches in width, a smouldering, sinuous path from
which fine threads of smoke rose straight upward, vanishing in the
woodland half-light.

He sprang from his horse and tore away a bed of green moss through which
filaments of blue smoke stole; and deep in the forest mould, spreading
like veins in an autumn leaf, fire ran underground, its almost invisible
vapor curling up through lichens and the brown carpet of pine-needles.

At first, for it was so feeble a fire, scarcely alive, he strove to
stamp it out, then to smother it with damp mould. But as he followed its
wormlike course, always ahead he saw the thin, blue signals rising
through living moss--everywhere t